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MY BOOK HOUSE 

THE LATCH KEY 


THE LATCH KEY 

H ERE stands a house all built of thought. 
And full to overflowing 
Of treasures and of precious things, 

Of secrets for my knowing. 

Its windows look out far and wide 
From each of all its stories. 

I’ll take the key and enter in; 

For me are all its glories. 


THE LATCH KEY 

of MV BCOKHO'JSE 

Edited by 

Olive Beaupre Miller 



CHICAGO 

BOOKHOUSE for CHILDREN 


PUBLISHERS 



Editorial Acknowledgments 

* + + 


The Editor is indebted to Chester H. Lawrence for his capable 
direction of the art work of MY BOOK HOUSE. Also the following 
artists who have contributed: 


Alice Beard 
N. C. Wyeth 
Tony Sarg 
Milo Winter 
Donn P. Crane 
Glen Ketchum 

Maginel Wright Enright 
Katherine Sturges Dodge 
Malcolm D. Charleson 
Maud and Miska Petersham 


Bert R. Elliott 
Hilda Hanway 
Anna Laufer 
Garada G. Riley 
Fay Turpin 
Ila McAfee 


The Publishers and the Editor wish to express their thanks to all 
the publishing houses which have so generously permitted the reprinting 
of copyrighted stories and poems. This copyrighted material is 
acknowledged on the pages where it appears. 

4 * * * 

Copyright, 1922 

By OLIVE BEAUPRE MILLER 
All Rights Reserved 


M/*i c~> 1922 

©CI.A67451 3 


,p vi. 0 



THE LATCH KEY 

Page 


Ideals --(John Dry den) 

Sketches from the Lives of the Authors 

(Arranged alphabetically) 

The Interesting History of Old Mother Goose 

The Origin of the Folk Tales 

What Is A Myth? 

Epic Poetry and the World’s Great Epics . 

How To Judge Stories for Children .... 
Index to Authors, Titles and Principal Characters 

Geographical Index 

Historical Index 

Special Subjects Index 

Introduction to Index According to Ethical Theme 
Index According to Ethical Theme • 


7 

8 

170 

178 

185 

189 

200 

218 

258 

268 

272 

300 

302 



THE 


LATCH KEY 



7 



MY BOOK HOUSE 

AESOP (Greek, About 619-564 B. C.) 

OMEWHERE in ancient Greece, the land of white- 
pillared cities and stately marble temples, was born 
the little slave boy, Aesop. While he was still a 
child, Aesop was brought to the far-famed city of 
Athens. There he was sold, like an ox or a sheep, from 
one master to another and performed in each household the hard 
and thankless duties of a slave. Nevertheless, he was always 
enlivening his tasks by the brightest and cleverest sallies of wit, 
which often threw his comrades into gales of laughter. 

Once, it is said, he and his fellow slaves were about to set out 
on a long journey with a certain merchant who was their master. 
Heavy bundles of necessary clothing and provisions were prepared 
for each of the slaves to carry. 

“Master, grant me to carry the lightest bundle,” cried Aesop. 

“Sobeit! Select the lightest,” his master answered. 

Immediately Aesop stepped forward and chose the heaviest 
and most unwieldy package of all, a bulky basket of bread. His 
comrades laughed at what they considered his foolishness, but 
when the noon meal came Aesop was ordered to distribute half 
his loaves among the party. Thus his load was lightened at the 
very time when the burdens of the others began to seem heavier and 
heavier from their having borne them so long. By supper time 
Aesop was ordered to distribute the rest of his bread and for the 
remainder of the journey he had nothing left to carry but the 
empty basket. His companions, as they trudged on, perspiring 
and weary, could not but admit that they had been the foolish 
ones and in spite of their burdens, they smiled at the joke which 
Aesop’s quick wit and foresight had played upon their stupidity. 

At last the young slave’s cleverness caught the attention of his 
master, Iadmon, the Samian, and as a fitting reward, Iadmon set 
him free. Thereupon, Aesop journeyed to the magnificent court of 
Croesus, King of Lydia, with whom he came into high favor. 



8 


THE LATCH KEY 

Thenceforward, during the rest of his life, he who had been bom 
a slave associated intimately with the greatest men of letters of 
his day, and none among them could turn a fable so perfectly 
as he, could pack so much truth into a story so short, pithy and 
exactly to the point. 

At length Aesop was sent as the ambassador of Croesus to 
Delphi, with instructions to pay a certain sum of money to each 
of the citizens there. On his arrival, however, he found the Del- 
phians to be in some fault and fell into a dispute with them. As 
the discussion waxed warmer and warmer, he flatly refused to dis- 
tribute the money. Incensed at his conduct, the Delphians ac- 
cused him of sacrilege and hurled him headlong from a precipice 
to his death. 

People have always insisted on believing that, in appearance, 
Aesop was a monster of ugliness and deformity, and so he is most 
often represented. This story, however, appears to be utterly 
without foundation and was probably invented long after his death, 
merely to make his wit seem more remarkable by contrast with 
such deformity. In truth, Aesop must have been unusually hand- 
some, since we are told that the Athenians erected in his honor 
a noble statue, by the famous sculptor, Lysippus. 

None of Aesop’s works remain today. How many of the fables 
attributed to him were actually his is extremely uncertain. His 
tales were probably never written down but were passed about 
from mouth to mouth, just as men tell a good story today. Walk- 
ing two and two in the market place, or beneath the splendid 
porticoes of the public baths, the ancient Athenians repeated these 
fables to each other and chuckled over their cleverness, exactly as 
men enjoy telling each other witty stories to this very day. They 
were popular in Athens during the most brilliant period of its 
literary history. Originally they were in prose, but in time were 
put into verse by various Greek and Latin poets. The most 
famous of these Latin poets was Phaedrus who lived at Rome in 


9 


MY BOOK HOUSE 



the first century A. D. Mere scraps of these early versions, how- 
ever, remain. In the fourteenth century, the monk Maximus 
Planudes made a collection which he gave out as Aesop’s, but the 
truth is that he added to Aesop’s fables a number taken from 
oriental sources. It is from this collection that the modern fables, 
as we know them, have been derived. Through all the ages no 
name shines more brightly for sage and clever wit than that of 

AeSOp. Aesop for Children, illustrated by Milo Winter 

ALCOTT,* LOUISA MAY (American, 1832-1888) 

In the historic old town of Concord, Massachusetts, there lived 
once a strong, sturdy, jolly girl named Louisa Alcott. Louisa’s 
home was a shabby, dingy old house, but it was full of simple happi- 
ness and its four bare walls rang often with shouts of merry laugh- 
ter. For Louisa had the tenderest, most loving mother imaginable, 
a wise, devoted father and three lively sisters, Anna, Beth and May. 
Over the hills behind old Concord, whence the green meadows 
swept away to meet the golden sunset, and down by the rush- 
bordered river that went slowly meandering through the town, the 
little girls loved to romp and play. 

’“Read the Life of Louisa May Alcott by Belle Moses 
IO 


THE LATCH KEY 

They weren’t very well off, so far as money goes, those Alcotts. 
Mr. Alcott was a school teacher with an immense love for children 
and a beautiful way of teaching them, but he believed very earnest- 
ly that people should lead simpler, truer, more useful lives than 
they do, and his opinions as to how they should set about doing 
this were so different from those held by others that men laughed 
at him and said he was odd and would not send their children to 
his school. Moreover, he said plainly that the owning of slaves 
was wrong, and this made him still more unpopular in an age when, 
even in the North, men were not ready at all to agree with him. 
So he found it very difficult indeed to get along. But Mr. Alcott 
was the sort of man who was always loyal to the best ideas he knew 
and would cling to them with his whole strength, no matter what 
it cost him. Shoulder to shoulder with him stood his brave wife, 
always upholding him, working day and night with her capable 
hands to make his burdens lighter, cooking, sewing, cleaning. And 
in spite of all the hard work she did, she was never too tired to be 
gay and jolly and interested in all that interested her daughters. So 
the four little girls were brought up from their infancy in a world of 
simple living and high thinking. They had plenty of joyous, care- 
free fun in which both mother and father joined, but they began 
to understand very early the necessity for being useful and bearing 
their share in the household tasks. Thus, though the house where 
they lived was poor and shabby, it was very rich in love and loyalty 
and simple homey joys. 

Louisa was a strong, active, handsome girl with blue eyes and a 
perfect mane of heavy chestnut hair. She could run for miles and 
miles and never get tired and she was as sturdy as a boy. Indeed, 
her mother used sometimes to call her Jo in fun and say that Jo was 


ANN^ 

LO^fP\A 




(n. jii i 



Cr 


Hff 



ii 



MY BOOK HOUSE 

her only son. Jo loved to climb trees and leap fences, run races and 
roll hoops, and when she was not playing with her sisters she liked 
best to play with boys. But beside all these lively sports, Louisa 
liked, too, to curl herself up in a chair and read or study. Sometimes 
she would go off alone up into the garret, taking a pile of apples 
with her and her favorite book. There she would read and munch 
away in happy solitude. All day long she had interesting thoughts 
and often she wrote these down in her diary. She used to make up 
stories, too, and tell them to her sisters. 

On occasion, little Louisa could be a turbulent miss and her high 
spirits often led her into paths of strange adventure. Once, when 
she was very small and lived in Boston, she ran away from home 
and spent the day with some Irish children. They shared a very 
poor and very salty dinner with her, after which they all went to 
play in the nice, dirty, ash heaps. Late in the afternoon they took 
a daring trip as far away as Boston Common. When it began 
to grow dark, however, Louisa's little Irish friends deserted her, and 
there she was left all alone in a strange place with the dusky shad- 
ows deepening and the night lights twinkling out. Then, indeed, 
she began to long for home, but she hadn't the smallest idea which 
way to go and so wandered helplessly on and on. At last, quite 
wearied out, she sat down on a welcome doorstep beside a friendly 
big dog. The dog kindly allowed her to use his back for a pillow 
and she fell fast asleep. From her dreams she was roused by the 
voice of the town crier who had been sent in search of her by her 
distracted parents. He was ringing his bell and calling out loudly, 
‘Tost! Lost! A little girl six years old in a pink frock, white hat 
and new green shoes!" 

Out of the darkness a small voice answered him, “Why dat's me !" 

Next day the little runaway was tied to the arm of a sofa to cure 
her of her wandering habit. 

When naughty traits of character got the better of Louisa, how- 
ever, she always suffered intensely in her own little heart for the 


12 


THE LATCH KEY 

wrong she had done. In the intervals of working off steam in the 
liveliest adventures, she was often sadly troubled by her faults. 
Sometimes, then, she had a little game she would play. She liked 
to make believe that she was a princess and that her kingdom was 
her own mind. When she had hateful, self-willed or dissatisfied 
thoughts, she tried to get rid of these by playing that they were 
enemies of her kingdom. She would marshal her legions of soldiers 
and march them bravely against the foe. Her soldiers, she said, 
were Patience, Duty and Love. With these she fought her battles 
and drove out the enemy. When she was only fourteen years old 
she wrote a poem about this. 

A little kingdom, I possess, 

Where thoughts and feelings dwell, 

And very hard I find the task 
Of governing it well. 

Nevertheless, after many a hotly contested battle, she did succeed 
in taking command and governing her kingdom like a queen. 

The house where the four girls lived in Concord had a yard full 
of fine old trees and a big barn which was their most particular 
delight. Here they produced many marvelous plays, for Anna and 
Louisa both had a wonderful talent for acting. They made the 
bam into a theatre and climbed up on the haymow for a stage. 
The grown people who came to see their plays would sit on chairs 
on the floor. One of the children’s favorite plays was Jack and the 
Beanstalk. They had a ladder from the floor to the loft, and all the 
way up the ladder they tied a squash vine to look like the wonderful 
beanstalk. When it came to the place in the story where Jack was 
fleeing from the giant and the giant was hot on his heels, about to 
plunge down the beanstalk, the girl who took the part of Jack 
would cut down the vine with a mighty flourish while the audience 
held their breath. Then, crashing out of the loft to his well-deserved 
end below, would come the monstrous old giant. This giant was 
made of pillows dressed in a suit of funny old clothes, with a fierce, 
hideous head made of paper. 


13 


MY BOOK HOUSE 



Another play which the children acted was Cinderella. They 
made a big pumpkin out of the wheelbarrow trimmed with yellow 
paper. Thus the pumpkin could easily become a golden coach in 
which Cinderella magnificently rolled away at a single stroke of 
the fairy godmother's wand. The tale of the foolish woman who 
wasted her three wishes was illustrated in a way to make the be- 
holders scream with laughter, by means of a pudding which was 
lowered by invisible hands until it rested upon the poor lady's nose. 

The costumes used in these performances were marvelous af- 
fairs, for Louisa, Anna and Mrs. Alcott had a wonderful knack for 
rigging up something out of nothing. A scrap found its use. A 
bright colored scarf, a table cover, a bit of old lace, a long cloak, a 
big hat with a plume stolen from some departed bonnet, would' 
afford a regal costume in which to come sweeping on to the stage. 
The children were never at a lack, either, for scenery, for their ready 
wit was quite capable of providing castles, enchanted forests, caves 
or ladies' bowers. Bams offered splendid opportunities, too, for a 
hero or a villain to make desperate but safe leaps from the beams, 
or to sink out of sight, at short notice, into one of the various man- 
gers, and hence they had everything necessary right at hand. 


14 


THE LATCH KEY 

There was one other beautiful and much more serious story 
which the Alcott children loved to play, though they did not give 
this to an audience in the barn, but played it alone for their own 
amusement. This story was Pilgrim’s Progress, in which the pil- 
grim, Christian, loaded down with his burden of sins, finds his way 
through toil and danger from the City of Destruction to the Celes- 
tial City. Their mother used to tie her piece-bags on their backs to 
represent Christian’s burden. Then they would put on broad- 
brimmed, pilgrim hats, take a stick for a staff and start out on their 
journey. From the cellar, which was the City of Destruction, they 
would mount to the housetop where was the Celestial City, and 
they would act out on the way, in most dramatic form, every step 
of Christian’s upward progress. Sometimes, instead of playing 
Pilgrim’s Progress indoors they would play it out of doors, wander- 
ing over the hills behind the house, through the woods and down 
the lanes. Louisa loved all these plays and, besides the old ones 
which they performed, she made up some new ones of her own, very 
thrilling and tragic and therefore, very funny. 

There could not have been a more beautiful place than Concord 



i5 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

for four hearty, simple girls like these to live. It was a typical New 
England village, quiet and homelike, with its plain, white houses 
and its shady elm trees, nestling in its circle of peaceful hills. There 
were no very rich people there and none very poor. The inhabi- 
tants were honest and friendly, with simple occupations and amuse- 
ments and very few worldly ambitions. In the winter the place 
used to ring with the happy voices of young people skating on the 
hardened snow in the pine woods. In the summer the river would 
be alive with gay bathing or boating parties. Concord was an 
historic old place, too, with its memories of the first gun-shots of the 
Revolution, and many a time in the days of the Alcott girls, there 
used to be masquerades on the fine old river to celebrate the anni- 
versary of that great event. Gay barges full of historic characters 
in costume would glide down the stream, and sometimes savages 
in their war-paint would dart from the lily-fringed river banks to 
attack the gay masqueraders. Hearty and healthy was the life in 
Concord and it produced a fine race of people, among them three, 
at least, of most remarkable character. These three were Emerson, 
Hawthorne and Thoreau, and though these men were much older 
than Louisa, they were all of them her friends. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson was one of the greatest men in the 
history of American literature. He was a thinker, a philosopher 
and a poet, strong, gentle and serene. He had stood by Mr. Alcott 
when everybody else laughed at him and deserted him, and from 
her earliest recollections Louisa had adored him. Once she went 
to school with the little Emersons in their father’s barn, for in those 
days of no public schools, teachers used frequently to gather their 
pupils together in bams. The illustrious Mr. Emerson was often 
the children’s playfellow. He would pile all the youngsters on a 
great hay-cart and take them off to picnic or go berrying in the 
woods. Emerson’s friend, Henry Thoreau, who loved the tangled 
depths of the forests, had once gone off and lived by himself in a 
hut that he built on the edge of Walden Pond, to prove to himself 

16 


THE LATCH KEY 

and others the joy of utterly simple living, close to the heart of 
Nature. The hut was in a beautiful spot among fragrant pines and 
overlooked the clear, green depths of the pond which Thoreau, 
from its gleaming expressiveness, called the eye of the earth. 
About Walden Pond, encircling it everywhere, rose the hills, the 
tall, green hills. To this beautiful spot Emerson used to take the 
children. He would show them all the places he loved, all the wood 
people Thoreau had introduced to him, or the wildflowers whose 
hidden homes he had discovered. So, years later, when the children 
read Emerson’s beautiful poem about the sweet rhodora in the 
woods, his “burly, dozing bumblebee,” or laughed over the fable of 
the Mountain and the Squirrel, they recognized old friends of these 
beautiful woodland jaunts and thanked Emerson for the delicate 
truth and beauty he had seen there and helped them to understand. 

To the turbulent, restless, half-grown Louisa the calm philos- 
opher, with his gentle ways and practical common-sense, was an 
anchor indeed. In her warm little heart he was held so sacredly 
that he himself would have smiled at such worship. She went to 
him often for advice about her reading and was at liberty to roam 
all around the book-lined walls of his library, there to select what- 
ever pleased her most, for Emerson was never too busy to help her. 

Hawthorne, too, handsome shy man that he was, always steering 
away from the society of grown-ups, had much to do with Louisa 
and the Concord children. He was always at his best with children 
and his stories never failed to hold Louisa spellbound. Doubtless 
she was one of the children to whom he first told the Tanglewood 
Tales and the stories in the Wonder Book. She pored over his 
books, and love and admiration for him grew with her growth. 

Henry Thoreau was the last of those great Concord friends who 
had such an influence on Louisa’s life. From him the Alcott girls 
learned to know intimately the nature they already loved, and 
many a happy day was spent with him in the woods, studying the 
secrets of the wildflowers and the language of the birds. It was 


17 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

down by the river that Thoreau was most often to be found. There 
he would row his boat or paddle his canoe with Indian skill through 
the many windings, stopping now and then to gather some rare plant 
from among the grasses on the shore. In his company the girls 
would take long, long walks, too, even tramping the twenty miles 
from Concord to Boston. There was not a single flower or tree that 
the gentle woodsman did not know; birds, squirrels and insects were 
his comrades. Hunted foxes would come to him for protection; 
wild squirrels would nestle in his coat ; birds and chipmunks gathered 
about him as he sat at rest on the river bank; he seemed able 
even to coax the fishes up to the surface to feed out of his hand. 
And so for him all Nature had a voice, and the Concord children 
loved the simple friend who taught them the poetry of the woods. 

As Louisa grew up into a tall young girl she began to come into 
prominence as a story teller. Her nature studies gave her material, 
and out in the Concord woods she would gather about her the little 
Emerson children, Ellen, Edith and Edward, and the three Haw- 
thorne children, Una, Julian and Rose, and many another, too. 
Then, under the spreading branches of some great tree, with the 
sunshine filtering down on her head and lighting up all the eager 
little faces about her, she would tell stories that made the very 
woods alive — wood-sprites and water-sprites and fairy queens danc- 
ing in and out through the greenery of those cool forest glades. 

But in spite of all the delights of Concord, Louisa was beginning 
to feel the weight of the family troubles. She saw her father strug- 
gling day by day, earning a little here and there by the work of his 
hands when his talents as a teacher were running to waste. She 
saw her mother carrying burdens too heavy for her and working far 
too hard. She had always helped her mother all she could with the 
housework, but the greatest need of the household now was for 
more money. A noble purpose took root in Louisa's heart. She 
would set out into the world, earn a living, and mend the family 
fortunes. She would give this dear devoted mother the comforts 

18 


KEY 


THE LATCH 

that had been denied her so 
long. Once determined to ac- 
complish this, Louisa never 
rested. True, she was only a 
girl, and there were very few 
lines of activity open to girls 
in those days. The way seem- 
ed dark before her and full of 
obstacles. But Louisa was 
never daunted. F ull of energy 
and pluck, she set forth. First 
she went up to Boston and 
lived in a wretched little sky- 
parlor. There she wrote stories 
for various magazines and 
papers, taught in a kinder- 
garten and did sewing or any- 
thing else that came to her 
hand. Only one thing mattered to her henceforth, to help her 
mother, father and sisters. Night and day she worked, never sparing 
herself, and every penny that she did not absolutely need for the 
barest necessities of life, she sent home to her mother and father. 
James Russell Lowell was the editor of the Atlantic Monthly in 
those days and he praised her stories and took them for his maga- 
zine. Yet, as the years passed, she wrote nothing that had any very 
lasting merit. She merely labored unceasingly and earned money 
enough by her own self-sacrifice to keep her dear ones in greater 
comfort at home. 

Then one day Louisa’s publisher asked her to write a book for 
girls. Louisa was very worn and weary, and she hadn’t the small- 
est idea that she could really write an interesting book for children. 
All these years she had written for grown-ups only. But she had 
never yet said “I can’t” when she was asked to do anything. So, 



19 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

in spite of her misgivings she answered the publishers simply, “I’ll 
try.” When she began to think about what she should write, she 
remembered all the good times she used to have with her sisters in 
the big, bare house in Concord, out in the old bam, and over the 
hills. So she wrote the story of Little Women and put in all those 
things. Besides the jolly times and the plays they had, she put 
in the sad, hard times too, the work and the worry and the going 
without things. It was a simple story of simple girls, of their 
daily struggles, their joys and sorrows, but through it all shone 
the spirit of that beautiful family affection that the Alcotts knew 
so well, an affection so strong and enduring that neither pov- 
erty, sorrow, nor death could ever mar it. And the little book was 
so sweet and funny, so sad and real, like human life, that every- 
body bought it and much money came from it. 

There were Mr. and Mrs. March in the book, true as life to Mr. 
and Mrs. Alcott, and there were all the four sisters too. Meg, the 
capable house- wifely one, was Anna; Jo (the old pet name for 
Louisa) was Louisa, herself, the turbulent, boyish one, who was 
always “going into a vortex” and writing stories; Beth was the 
sweet, sunny little home-body, Lizzie or Beth; Amy was May, the 
pretty, golden-haired, blue-eyed one, with the artistic tastes, whose 
pug nose was such a sore trial to her beauty-loving soul that she 
went about with a clothespin on it to train it into proper lines. 
There was a real John Brooke, too. He was a portrait of that 
gentle, kindly, lovable John Pratt, who really married Anna. And 
Laurie was a mixture of a handsome, polished, Polish boy whom 
Louisa had once met in Europe, and a certain New England lad who 
was her friend in girlhood. So, many of the good times in Little 
Women are true, and many of the sad times too, — the marriage 
of Meg and John Brooke, and the death of dear little Beth. 

Louisa was hardly prepared for the immense success of this 
book. It made her almost rich, and besides that, she suddenly 
found herself so worshiped and idolized by young people and old 


20 


THE LATCH KEY 

alike, that crowds began haunting her path, hanging about the 
house to get just a glimpse of her — popping up in her way to bow 
reverently as she went for a walk or a drive, deluging her with 
flowers, and writing her sentimental verses. All this attention 
drove Louisa nearly distracted, so she had to run away from it for 
a year’s rest in Europe. But ever after that the children considered 
Louisa their especial property and she devoted herself henceforth 
to writing for them entirely. She loved them very dearly, too, boys 
and girls alike, and no American author has ever held a warmer 
place than she in the hearts of American young people. 

And so, after so many years of the hardest, most devoted and 
unselfish labor, Louisa’s dream came true. She was able to give 
her dear family all that they needed and wanted. She bought a 
comfortable home for them in Concord, she sent May to study art 
in Europe, she gave her father books, but best of all, she was able 
at last to give her beloved mother the happiness and rest which she 
had so nobly earned. Never again did “Marmee” have to do any 
hard work. She could sit from that time forth in a comfortable 
chair beside the sunny window with beautiful work and beauiful 
things about her. A successful life was Louisa Alcott’s, one of toil 
and effort, indeed, of joy and sorrow, and ceaseless self-sacrifice, but 
through it all, as through Little Women ran the golden thread of 
that splendid family love. 

Important Works: Little Women Little Men Jo's Boys An Old-fashioned Girl 

Jack and Jill Eight Cousins Rose In Bloom Silver Pitchers 

ALDEN, RAYMOND MacDONALD (American, 1873-) 

Raymond MacDonald Alden was bom at Hartford, New York, 
and educated at Rollins College, Florida, the University of Penn- 
sylvania, and Harvard. He has edited several plays by Shakespeare 
and the Elizabethan dramatists, and has taught as instructor and 
professor at Harvard, Leland Stanford, Jr. and the Universities 
of Pennsylvania and Illinois. He was director of the Drama League 
of America from its founding until 1914. 

Important Works: Why The Chimes Rang 


21 


MY BOOK HOUSE 


ALDRICH, THOMAS BAILEY 
(American, 1836-1907) 

HOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH was 
born in the quaint, old, elm-shaded 
town of Portsmouth, New Hamp- 
shire, which lies so near to the 
ocean that the constant sight of 
tall-masted ships and the smell of 
the sea are enough to set any 
boy’s blood a-tingle with the spirit of adventure. 

As a boy Tom was very fond of reading. He spent whole 
hours in the attic of the old house where he lived, and there from 
the midst of castaway rubbish, he dug out such books of adven- 
ture as Don Quixote, Arabian Nights, and various works 
of Defoe. 

Among the antiquated furniture in the attic, too, was an old- 
fashioned, hide-covered trunk, reminiscent of those fascinating 
days long past. The trunk had worn exceedingly shabby, but 
still had enough of the air of romance about it to be very inter- 
esting to Tom. One day, as the boy was passing a barber’s shop, 
he saw some hair restorer displayed in the window, in connection 
with marvelous promises as to what the same could do in the 
matter of restoring hair where none seemed to be. Thinking of 
his beloved but moth-eaten trunk, Tom went into the shop im- 
mediately and parted with what must have seemed an enormous 
amount of his pocket money, to buy a bottle of the hair restorer. 
He then returned at once to his attic and began applying the 
liquid copiously to the hide of the trunk, in eager hopes of seeing 
new hair appear in the bald places. Every day, thereafter, he 
patiently climbed the stairs to observe the expected sprouting. 
But strange to say, the old trunk remained as bald as before! 



22 


THE LATCH KEY 

Before he was twelve years old, Tom had written a pirate story 
called by the highly exciting name of Colenzo. The scene of this 
thrilling tale was a wild, lonely and tropical isle located, accord- 
ing to Tom, somewhere about seven miles off Portsmouth Harbor! 

When Tom was sixteen, his father died, and there was no money 
to send the boy to college, so he set out to seek his fortune in New 
York. There he became a clerk in the office of an uncle who was 
a banker. All the time, however, the impulse which had prompted 
him to write Colenzo was urging and urging within him, so that, 
by the time he was twenty, he had decided to break away from 
the business world altogether and devote himself to writing as a 
profession. At first it was by no means easy sailing, trying to earn 
a living by writing. He obtained work as a proof-reader in a pub- 
lishing house, to make both ends meet, but he stuck pluckily to 
his profession and at last found himself editor of one of the well 
known magazines. From that time on he was always a prominent 
figure in the literary world. 

For many years he was a writer both of prose and of such lovely 
poems as Robins in the Treetop. He was also the editor, at differ- 
ent times, of various magazines, including the New York Illus- 
trated News and the Atlantic Monthly. But always Tom’s boy- 
hood and the happy days of boyish adventure and fancy in Ports- 
mouth were with him. Rivermouth, the scene of several of his 
stories, is really Portsmouth, and in The Story of a Bad Boy, he 
tells much that was true of his own boyhood. 



In the old Aldrich home at Ports- 


v\ \\ 

mouth visitors may see, to this very 


J 

day, the marvelous ship and the little 



room that were Tom's, and in the 



garret, the playthings of which he 



tells and which he so dearly loved. 



Important Works: The Story of a Bad Boy 
Marjorie Daw 



23 



MY BOOK HOUSE 

ALLINGHAM, WILLIAM (Irish, 1824-1889) 

Allingham was an Irish poet, born at Ballyshannon in the 
county of Donegal, a country whose very name suggests Irish 
imagination and all the eerie atmosphere of Ireland’s fairy lore. 
He was an intimate friend of Tennyson, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, 
Leigh Hunt and all the rest of that splendid company of English 
poets who made the reign of Queen Victoria one of the greatest 
periods in English literature. But for all his longer and more pre- 
tentious works, Allingham is remembered today chiefly for just 
those few graceful little poems that nearly every child knows, 
The Fairies, The Song of the Leprechaun, and Robin Redbreast 

Important Works: Day and Night Songs Rhymes for Young Folks 

ALMA-TADEMA, SIRLAWRENCE(Belgian-English, 1836-1912) 
In the year 1836 there was bom of a very old and wealthy 
Dutch family in the Netherlands, a small boy named Lawrence 
Alma-Tadema. When he was old enough to go to school Lawrence 
was sent to Antwerp to study, and there he very soon began to 
show a wonderful talent for drawing. He grew eagerly interested, 
too, in old Greek and Roman tables and chairs and lamps and 
everything else that had to do with the days of long ago. How 
the old Greeks lived when the Acropolis crowned a busy city hum- 
ming with life, what the Romans did when the Forum was a center 
of bustling activity — all this fascinated him and he kept on study- 
ing it and investigating it until, by and by, he began to paint the 
most interesting pictures on those subjects. 

When he was still a very young man he went to England and 
in 1873 he became a British subject. During all the rest of his 
life he lived in London and hence he is classed among British ar- 
tists. Though Alma-Tadema wrote some beautiful poems which 
all children know, he is remembered chiefly for his paintings. 
These pictures are vivid scenes from the everyday life of the an- 
cients, such as, “How They Amused Themselves in Egypt Three 
Thousand Years Ago,” “A Roman Dance,” etc. 

24 


THE LATCH KEY 

ANDERSEN, HANS CHRISTIAN (Danish, 1805-1875) 

It matters not to have been born in a duck-yard, if one has been 
hatched from a swan’s egg. 

HUNDRED years or more ago there lived in 
the ancient city of Odense in Denmark, an 
awkward, overgrown, lean little boy. Hans 
Andersen’s father was a cobbler, his mother a 
washerwoman, and they were so poor that they 
lived in one room under a steep gabled roof. 
That room had to be kitchen and parlor, work- 
shop and bedroom all in one, but, poor as it 
was, it was to Hans most wonderfully exciting. In every comer 
it was full of interesting things. The walls were covered with 
pictures; the tables and chests had shiny cups, glasses and jugs 
upon them; in the lattice window grew pots of mint; from the raft- 
ers hung bunches of sweet herbs, and there were always fresh green 
boughs hanging here and there about. Over by the window, where 
the sun streamed in, was the cobbler’s work-bench and a shelf of 
books. But most interesting of all to Hans was the door of the 
room which was brightly painted with pictures — fields and hedges, 
trees and houses, perhaps even castles — and when the little boy 
had gone to bed and his mother and father thought him fast 
asleep, he would lie awake to look at those pictures and make up 
stories about them. Often, too, in the day time he would crawl 
up the ladder and out on the roof of the house where in the gut- 
ter between the Andersen’s cottage and the one next door, there 
stood a box of earth in which Hans’s mother had planted chives 
and parsley. This was their garden, for all the world like Kay and 
Gerda’s garden in the Snow Queen. 

Hans’s father, though he passed his days pounding pegs into 
shoes, was a very well educated man, who had seen far better days. 
He loved to read and spent all his spare time with his books. This 
made him seem very different from his poor neighbors, and even 



25 


MY BOOK HOUSE 



from his wife who had no education at all. He and Hans were 
great friends and they often went on long walks together. While 
the father sat and thought or read, Hans ran about and gathered 
wild strawberries or made pretty garlands of flowers. It was from 
his father that the boy got his love for reading and his rich and 
vivid fancy. Nevertheless, though Hans liked to read, he did no 
other lessons at all, for he did not like other studies. 

As a child he would play all alone out in the tiny garden be- 
hind the house. For hours he would sit near their one gooseberry 
bush where, with the help of a broomstick and his mother's apron, 
he had made a little tent. Under this shelter he would sit cozily 
in all kinds of weather, fancying things and inventing stories. His 
father had made him some wonderful toys, pictures that changed 
their shape when pulled with a string, a mill which made the miller 
dance when it turned around, and a peepshow of funny rag dolls. 
Hans liked best of all to play with this little toy theatre, for he was 
unusually fond of plays. He would dress up these little rag pup- 
pets and very seriously make them go through the actions of many 
a thrilling drama. 

Occasionally, though very seldom, the boy went to school. 
Once he made friends at school with a little girl, to whom he told 
many remarkable stories. These stories were chiefly about him- 
self, and his favorite one was how he was of noble birth only the 

26 


THE LATCH KEY 

fairies had changed him in his cradle and nobody knew the truth 
about him! One day he heard the little girl say, “Hans is a fool.” 
Poor little Hans! He trembled and told her no more stories. 

When Hans was only eleven years old his father died and he 
was left alone with his mother. He still continued to play with 
his toy theatre, but he also now read everything on which he could 
lay his hands. Best of all he loved to read Shakespeare, and 
Shakespeare left a deep impression upon him. He liked particu- 
larly those plays of Shakespeare’s where there were ghosts or 
witches, and indeed he became so devotedly fond of the drama 
that he felt he must be an actor. Sometimes he decided that he 
could sing unusually well and should make his fortune by acting 
and singing. One day an old woman who was washing clothes in 
the river told Hans that the Empire of China lay down there under 
the water. Having taken no pains to learn anything about the 
world, Hans quite believed her and thought to himself that per- 
haps, some moonlight night when he should be singing down by 
the water’s edge, a Chinese prince, charmed by his marvelous 
music, would push his way up through the earth and take him 
down to China to make him rich and noble as a reward for such 
unsurpassed singing. Then the prince might let him return some 
day to Odense, where he would be very rich and build himself a 
castle, to be envied and admired by all who had once despised him! 

Naturally enough, young Hans singing in the lanes, reading 
and playing theatre alone by himself at home, was despised and 



27 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

regarded almost as a lunatic by the people of Odense. Tall, gawky 
boy that he was, with a huge nose, tiny eyes and a great long neck 
like a bird’s, with feet and hands as big as boats, and clothes al- 
ways too small for him — he was the laughing stock of the neighbor- 
hood. Boys teased him and screamed after him, “There goes the 
play scribbler.” Wounded to the quick, Hans shrank away from 
them all and hid himself at home, safe from their mockery. He 
had not a single friend of his own age in Odense. 

The gentry who lived round about, though they were amused 
by the cobbler’s peculiar son, were also sorry for him. They 
laughed at his absurd ambitions to be a great writer, a singer or 
actor, when he had never taken the trouble to get the smallest 
education, but they tried, too, to induce him to go to school. For 
a time he did as they wished, but in school he was always dreamy 
and absent-minded, studying little, and he tried to please his master 
by bringing him wild flowers instead of learning his lessons. 

At length, at the age of fourteen, he came to the conclusion 
like the heroes he had read about in his books, that he would set 
out and seek his fortune. This meant that he would go to Copen- 
hagen and there find work at the theatre. He had heard of a won- 
derful thing called a ballet which seemed to him grander and finer 
than anything else in the world, and of a marvelous lady who 
danced in the ballet. Hans pictured this chief dancer as a sort of 
fairy queen, who should graciously condescend to help him and, 
by a wave of her hand, make him famous. 

His mother was rather alarmed at these plans of the lad, so 
she sought advice from a fortune-teller. But that wise woman, 
after consulting the coffee grounds, solemnly announced that Hans 
Christian Andersen would be a great man and that all Odense 
would one day be illumined to do him honor! This statement 
seemed ridiculous and was received with many a wink and shrug of 
the shoulders by others, but it satisfied Hans’s mother and she con- 
sented to let him go. So the boy confidently did up his little bundle, 

28 


THE LATCH KEY 

and with nine dollars in his pocket, took ship for Copenhagen. 

Once arrived in the city, he hurried off to find his fairy queen, 
the chief dancer, and poured out in her wondering ears his long- 
ing to go on the stage. To show her what he could do, he took off 
his shoes and began dancing about in his stocking feet, using his 
hat for a drum and beating a lively tattoo! Needless to say, the 
graceful gambols of this overgrown giraffe terrified the poor lady. 
She took him for a lunatic and hastily showed him the door. 

In spite of this disappointment, however, Hans persisted. He 
went to seek help from the Director of the Theatre, only to meet 
here with another rebuff. He was told that none but educated 
people were engaged for the stage. So began the long series of 
Hans’s adventures and disappointments. Ridiculous as he ap- 
peared to others, he sincerely respected himself and had a firm 
belief in his own ability to do something. But he was keenly sen- 
sitive, too, and the constant rebuffs he met with always hurt him 
sorely. All the unhappiness of those days, as well as of his child- 
hood, he expressed years later in the story of the Ugly Duckling, 
whose buffetings and miseries represent his own early trials. 

He lived now in a garret in the poorest quarter of Copenhagen 
and had nothing to eat but a cup of coffee in the morning and a 
roll later in the day. Though he found friends who even then 
recognized his talent and wished to help him, he would not take 
from them more than was absolutely necessary. He would pre- 
tend that he had had plenty to eat and that he had been dining 
out with friends, rather than accept more of their charity. He 
would say, too, that he was quite warm when his clothes were 
threadbare and his boots so worn and leaky that his feet were 
sopping with water. The courage and determination he showed 
at this time were really remarkable in a lad of fifteen. He once 
sent a play he had written to the RoyalTheatre, never doubting in 
his childish ignorance that it would be accepted. It came back to 
him very soon with the curt comment that it showed such a lack 


29 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

of education as to be absolutely absurd. Nothing daunted, however, 
he wrote another play and tried again. This time those who read 
his manuscript at the theatre said that it showed unmistakable 
signs of talent, and they advised Andersen’s friends to ask the 
King for money to educate the boy. 

Frederick VI of Denmark was like the kind kings in Andersen’s 
stories. He arranged at once that Hans should be sent to school, 
and from then on he helped the boy until he was able to take care 
of himself. Hans was not happy in school, however. Here he was, 
a great hulking lad of seventeen, having to go into classes with the 
very smallest boys. He had plenty of opportunity then to wish 
that he had applied himself earlier to his lessons. But though he 
worked hard, both here and later at the University in Copenhagen, 
he found it difficult to learn, and was generally thought a dunce. 
He continued to write poems, plays and sketches, which were all 
pronounced wishy-washy and silly. He failed again and again. 
Yet in the very bottom of his heart, in spite of all his failures, some- 
thing always said, “I can,” and his faith in himself never faltered. 

At length, Frederick VI allowed him money for foreign travel, 
and he set forth to visit Italy, France and Germany. In Italy he 
found his inspiration for his first really successful novel, The Im - 
provisatore , which was published on his return to Copenhagen. 

During all this time Andersen had been looking solely to his 
novels and plays to win him success and recognition. But while he 
was doing work of the most ordinary merit in this line he had one 
admirable talent which he never even dreamed of taking seriously. 
Odense, his birthplace, was a rich treasure house of legends and folk 
lore, and sometimes, just to amuse the children of his friends, he 
would gather the little ones about him and weave these old legends 
into the most wonderful stories. He would tell these tales in the 
liveliest manner, never bothering about grammar but using childish 
words and baby language, and as he talked he would act and jump 
about and make the most remarkable faces. The children were 


30 


THE LATCH KEY 

simply delighted. At length, 

Andersen’s friends suggested 
that he write down these stories. 

At first he laughed at such an 
idea, but finally he consented, 
more in fun than in earnest. So 
he wrote the stories exactly as 
he told them. This made them 
different from anything else 
that had ever been published 
in Denmark. Most people 
when they write have a formal, 
stilted manner, quite different 
from their ordinary conversation, but Andersen’s tales were 
written in the same lively, simple, informal style in which he had 
told them. In this lay their particular charm. The critics, of 
course, — those who were not too grand even to look at such childish 
trash — criticized the stories for this informal style and bewailed the 
lack of elegance in their wording. 

Even Andersen himself did not take these “small things” 
seriously, and yet it was his fairy tales and nothing else that won 
him his lasting fame. In them he gave free rein to his wonderful 
fancy and embodied all the childlike simplicity of his great and 
loving heart. Soon the stories became so popular that they were 
translated into one foreign language after another, and while 
Andersen’s novels and plays have long since been forgotten, it is 
due to his fairy tales that he is still more widely read than any 
other Scandinavian writer. Children pore over these stories to this 
very day, from America to India, from Greenland to South Africa. 

The recognition thus won by Andersen after so many years of 
struggle was, to him, a source of constant wonder and delight. 
That he, the son of a poor washerwoman and a cobbler, should now 
be the friend of princes and kings, seemed to him more marvelous 

3i 





MY BOOK HOUSE 

than the most fantastic incidents of his own fairy tales. Often, 
when he was enjoying some quite ordinary luxury which most 
people take for granted, such as lying on a sofa in a new dressing 
gown, surrounded by books, he would think of his childhood and 
wonder. On his travels, too, he found himself welcomed every- 
where and met on the friendliest terms by the greatest literary men 
of his day. In France he met Dumas and Victor Hugo, in Ger- 
many, the brothers Grimm, in England, Charles Dickens, and his 
simple, childlike nature drew all people to love him. Now, when 
he passed along the streets of Copenhagen, those who saw him 
would nudge each other and say, “There goes the great poet!” 
Quite different from the days when the boys had shrieked after him, 
“There goes the play scribbler!” 

On December sixth, 1867, when Andersen was sixty two years 
old, the prophecy made so long ago to his mother was fulfilled. In 
Odense, the city of his birth, the once scorned and ugly little boy 
was greeted with an immense celebration. To do him honor all the 
town, from end to end, was one great blaze of light. And so, at 
last, the ugly duckling turned out, in very truth, to be a swan. 

Important Works: Andersen’s Fairy Tales The Improvisator e 

ASBJORNSEN, PETER CHRISTEN (Norwegian, 1812-1885; 
MOE, JORGEN (Norwegian, 1813-1882) 

Once there was a man who used to wander on foot through the 
picturesque villages and quaint little hamlets of Norway, talking 
to the peasants and gathering the fine old fairy tales of the people. 
This man was Peter Christen Asbjornsen. When Peter was only 
fourteen years old he formed a firm friendship with a lad named 
Jorgen Moe. As the two grew to manhood, they found they were 
both interested in the same work, searching out their national fairy 
tales. They decided, therefore, to work together. Moe was a 
tutor, but in the holidays he, too, wandered through the mountains 
and into all sorts of out-of-the-way places, collecting tales and 
legends, and getting from many an old grandmother or simple 


32 


the latch key 

minded maiden, some beautiful story to add to his collection. 

In 1842 the first volume of their joint work appeared. It was 
called Norwegian Popular Tales, and was so well done that Asb- 
jorsen and Moe have remained ever since the best known of all 
collectors of Norse Tales. Later, Asbjomsen and Moe each did work 
alone, and Moe not only wrote fairy tales, but also some of the 
finest original and realistic stories ever written for children. 
Among the latter is the Tale of Viggo and Beate, which has been 
so beautifully translated by Gudrun Thome-Thomsen in The 
Birch and the Star. 

Important Works: Norwegian Popular Stories ( translated by Sir 
George Dasent as Popular Tales from the Norse) 

BACON, JOSEPHINE DODGE DASKAM (American, 1876- ) 

VEN while at Smith College, Josephine 
Dodge Daskam was noted for her cleverness 
and originality. Before she graduated, in 
1898, she had had work published in the 
magazines. Mrs. Bacon has three children 
whose bringing up she considers the most 
important thing in her life. She loves chil- 
dren, gardening, making preserves, and raising pigs. 

Important Works: Biography of a Baby On Our Hill 

The Imp and the Angel Smith College Stories 

BAILEY, CAROLINE SHERWIN (American, 1877- ) 

Caroline Sherwin Bailey is a beloved kindergarten teacher of 
New York. She taught in the kindergartens of the public schools 
and at one time while engaged in this work, lived at the Warren 
Goddard Settlement in New York. Here she led story groups and 
studied the story needs of the children. For a long time she was 
editor of the Juvenile Department of the Delineator. Now she 
devotes her entire time to writing, lecturing and giving courses in 
story telling. 

Important Works: Firelight Stores; For the Children's Hour; For the Story Teller; 

Stories Children Need; Tell Me Another Story 



33 



MY BOOK HOUSE 



BARNUM, PHINEAS T. (American, 1810-1891) 

On the fifth of July, 1810, heralded by a mighty thundering 
of cannon, a rattling of drums, and all the other noises of Inde- 
pendence Day, there appeared for the first time on this world's 
stage, a small boy, named Phineas T. Barnum, who was destined 
to become the greatest showman in all the world, and to make a 
bigger stir, both in America and Europe, than all the Independ- 
ence Days put together. Phineas was born in the town of Bethel, 
Connecticut. His father was a tailor, a farmer and sometimes 
a tavern keeper, and Phineas led the life of an ordinary country 
boy, driving the cows to pasture, shelling corn, weeding the 
garden and riding the horse which led the ox team in ploughing. 
But the boy liked better to work with his head than with his hands, 
and he was always figuring out ways and means of earning money. 
On holidays, especially those days when the soldiers marched 
out and trained on the green with scores of country folk looking 
on, days when other boys were riotously spending all their hoard- 
ed pennies, Phineas was busy earning money! With bustling in- 
dustry he peddled molasses candy, home-made gingerbread, cookies 
and sugar candies among the crowd, thus generally finding him- 
self richer at the end of the holiday by many a merry penny. 

As Phineas grew up he tried keeping a country store. A 
jolly place it was, where in the evenings and on rainy days, all 


34 



THE 


LATCH 


KEY 



the wits and wags of the village gathered, to sit around the stove 
and talk or play jokes on one another, for all his life long Phineas 
dearly loved a joke. But keeping store was by no means in 
Phineas’s line; he was only moderately successful and it was 
not until he was twenty-five years old, married and with a little 
daughter of his own, that he found the work for which he was 
really fitted. This work was nothing more or less than providing 
people with clean and wholesome amusement. 

In 1835, Barnum heard of a remarkable negro woman named 
Joice Heth who was said to be one hundred and sixty-one years 
old and to have been the nurse of George Washington. She was 
a dried up, little, old creature, looking almost like a mummy, with 
a head of bushy, thick, grey hair. She lay stiff on a couch and 
could not move her limbs, nevertheless, she was pert and sociable, 
and would talk as long as anyone would converse with her. It 
was said that she had lain for years in an out-house on the estate 
of a certain John S. Bowling in Virginia, having been there so 
long that nobody knew or cared how old she was until one day 
Mr. Bowling accidently discovered an old bill of sale describing 
this woman as having been sold by Augustine Washington, father 
of George, to his half sister, Elizabeth Atwood. Being greatly 
interested in Joice, Barnum sold out his store for $500 and with 
this little capital, he started out to exhibit her. 


35 



MY BOOK HOUSE 

He saw in the very beginning of his career that everything 
depended on getting the public excited and interested, to think 
and talk of what he had to exhibit. Accordingly, he made great 
use of advertisements in newspapers and every other means to 
arouse public interest. As a result, his showrooms in New York, 
Boston, Albany and elsewhere, were thronged, and he earned a 
vast return on his money. Joice would prattle away garrulously 
about her “dear little George,” meaning George Washington, 
and she would tell how she had been present at the birth of the Father 
of His Country, and had been the one to put the very first clothes 
on the dear little infant. Often people would ask her questions 
about the Washington family and she would answer all, and was 
never caught in a single contradiction. When interest in the 
old woman appeared to flag, Barnum secretly caused the news- 
papers to agitate the question whether she was not, after all, a 
mere automaton and no living woman, a made image that talked 
and moved by means of machinery and springs. Then more crowds 
of people flocked to his hall to find out the truth about her. 

Bamum’s next venture after Joice Heth, was an Italian juggler 
who performed certain remarkable feats of balancing, plate spin- 
ning and stilt walking. This man called himself Signor Antonio 
and had once travelled with a monkey and a hand organ in Italy, 
but Barnum induced him first to take a bath and then to take 
upon himself the much more imposing name of Signor Vivalla. 
By dint of much advertising, he then made Vivalla very popular, 
and so remarkable was Bamum’s ability to turn everything, 
even criticism, to good account, that he won his greatest success 
with Vivalla, by making good use of a hiss of derision that greeted 
one of the Signor’s appearances from the audience. Far from 
being downcast by this hiss, Barnum sought out the one who had 
made the contemptuous noise and found him to be one, Roberts, a 
circus preformer, who insisted that he -could do all Vivalla had 
done and more. Immediately Barnum challenged Roberts to hold 

36 


THE LATCH KEY 

a contest with Vivalla, offering a thousand dollars prize to the 
winner. He then advertised the trial of skill far and wide until 
he got the public interest at a white heat, thus drawing packed 
houses both for the first and following contests. 

In April, 1836, Bamum contracted for himself and Vivalla to 
join Aaron Turner’s Traveling Circus Co. Bamum, himself, was 
to act as ticket seller, secretary and treasurer. Mr. Turner was 
an old showman, but to Bamum this traveling and performing 
in canvas tents was altogether new. For centuries, in England, 
dwarfs, giants and wild men had been popular, and there had 
been shows of jugglers, performing horses, dancing bears, feats 
of horsemanship, acrobats, rope-dancers, etc. at fairs and else- 
where. Indeed, an ancient hand-illumined Anglo-Saxon man- 
uscript shows an audience in an arena or ampitheatre built dur- 
ing the Roman occupation of Britain diverted by a musician, a 
dancer and a trained bear, while Shakespeare, in Love’s Labours 
Lost, refers to a famous performing horse of his day. Rope-dancers 
threw somersaults over naked swords and men’s heads in the days 
of Charles II, and Joseph Clark, the original “boneless man,’’ 
appeared in the age of James II, while George Washington and 
his staff attended a circus performance in Philadelphia in 1780. 
But the regular tenting circus that travelled about with wagons 
had not come into being either in England or America until 
sometime between the years 1805 and 1830. At first, these 
circuses were very small and modest exhibitions, met only at 
fairs, and they performed only in the daytime, because no means 
had been discovered for lighting the tent at night. But when in 
1830, the method of lighting the ring with candles in a frame 
around the center pole was devised, the circus began to grow. 
Turner’s Circus, with which Bamum first travelled, was a moder- 
ate sized show and they set forth with quite a train of wagons, 
carriages, horses and ponies, a band of music and about twenty- 
five men. Their tour was very successful for all concerned, but 


37 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

in the fall Bamum took friendly leave of Turner and with several 
wagons, a small canvas tent and such performers as Vivalla, 
James Sandford, a negro singer and dancer, several musicians 
and Joe Pentland, one of the cleverest and most original of clowns, 
he began a little traveling exhibition of his own. 

In Camden, South Carolina, Sandford suddenly deserted the 
company, and as Mr. Bamum had advertised negro songs at his 
performance, he was obliged to black his own face and hands, go 
on the stage and sing the advertised songs himself. To his surprise 
he was roundly applauded. But, when, in his negro black, he hurri- 
ed out after one of these performances, to uphold some of his men 
against a white man who was abusing them, the fiery Southerner, 
taking him in truth for a negro, drew his pistol and shouted, 
“You black rascal, how dare you use such language to a white 
man!” Only the greatest presence of mind, which prompted 
Bamum to roll up his sleeve in a twinkling and reveal his own 
white skin, saved him from a bullet. 

In going from Columbus, Georgia, to Montgomery, Alabama, 
Bamum’s Company was obliged to cross a thinly settled, deso- 
late tract known as the “Indian Nation,” and as several persons 
had been murdered there by hostile Indians, it was deemed 
dangerous to travel the road without an escort: Only the day 
before the stage coach had been held up in that region. The 
circus men were all well armed, however, and trusted that their 
numbers would seem too formidable to be attacked, but they 
said quite openly that they earnestly wished there were no need 
to run the risk. Vivalla, alone, declared himself to be fearless 
and loudly boasted that he was ready to encounter fifty Indians 
and drive them all into the swamp. Accordingly, when the party 
had safely passed over the entire route to within fourteen miles 
of Montgomery, and were beyond the reach of danger, Joe 
Pentland, the clown, determined to test Vivalla’s much boasted 
bravery. Pentland had secretly purchased an old Indian dress 

33 


THE LATCH KEY 

with a fringed hunting shirt and moccasins, and these he put on, 
after coloring his face with Spanish brown. Then, shouldering 
his musket, he followed Vivalla and his party, and approaching 
stealthily, he leaped into their midst with a terrific war whoop. 
Bamum and Vivalla’s other companions were all in the secret 
and they instantly fled, leaving the doughty hero alone with the 
foe. Without more ado, Vivalla took to his heels and ran like a 
deer. Pentland followed him, yelling horribly and brandishing his 
gun. After running a full mile, the hero, out of breath and frighten- 
ed nearly out of his wits, dropped on his knees before his pursuer and 
begged for his life. The Indian levelled his gun at his victim but 
soon seemed to relent and signified that Vivalla should turn his 
pockets inside out. This he did, handing over to Pentland a purse 
containing eleven dollars. The savage then marched Vivalla to an 
oak, and with his handkerchief tied him in the most approved 
Indian manner to the tree. After this, Pentland joined Bamum 
and the others and as soon as he had washed his face and changed 
his dress they all went to the rescue of Vivalla. The little Italian 
was overjoyed to see them coming, but the very moment that he 
was released he began to swagger about again, swearing that, after 
his companions had fled, the one Indian who had first attacked 
them had been reinforced by six more. He had defended himself 
stoutly, he said, but the superior force of the seven huge braves 
had at last compelled him to 
surrender! For a week the party 
pretended to believe Vivalla’s 
big story, but at the end of that 
time they told him the truth and 
Joe Pentland showed him his 
purse, desiring to return it. In- 
wardly, Vivalla must have been 
deeply chagrined, but outwardly 
he flatly refused to believe the 



39 



MY BOOK HOUSE 

story, and stubbornly said that he would not take back the eleven 
dollars, insisting that the money could not possibly be his, since 
his purse had been taken, not by one Indian, but by seven ! 

Now, at length, Bamum began to long earnestly for some more 
settled and worth while phase of the show business. It happened 
at just this time that the American Museum in New York City 
was for sale at a moderate price, for the reason that it had not 
been run for some time past so as to make any money. It was a 
fine collection of curiosities and Bamum determined to buy it, 
though the price, low as it was, was enormous in comparison 
with the small amount of capital which he had been able so far to 
lay by. He had the most eager confidence, however, that he could 
manage the museum so as to make it pay large returns, and he had 
the courage to stake all that he had on his own enterprise, wit and 
ability. Accordingly, he offered to pay down all he possessed 
and to make enough out of the museum to pay the rest within a 
set space of time, agreeing that if he could not do so, he should 
forfeit not only the museum, but the whole amount that he had 
thus far paid. 

So he found himself, at last, in possession of a valuable and 
instructive, as well as amusing, collection, well worthy that he 
should devote to it all his wonderful energies. There were all 
sorts of rare beasts and remarkably trained animals, from per- 
forming dogs to performing fleas, these latter only to be seen 
with their tiny carriages and outfits, through a magnifying glass. 
There were giants, dwarfs, jugglers, ventriloquists, rope-dancers, 
gypsies, Albinos and remarkable mechanical figures. Mr. Barnum 
banished all the poor and vulgar things which so frequently dis- 
figured other performances of this kind, and devoted himself, 
heart and soul, to giving the public the best and cleanest per- 
formance to be found for twenty-five cents anywhere in the city. 

He had such a remarkable understanding of human nature, 
and so keen and merry a wit, that he was always able to startle the 


40 


THE LATCH KEY 

public attention and keep people thinking and talking about his 
performances. Once he employed a man to go very solemnly and 
lay down three bricks at certain distances apart in front of the 
museum, then to pass as solemnly with a fourth brick in his hand 
from one of the three to another, picking up each and exchanging 
it for the one he held in his hand. In no time at all the mysterious 
doings of the brick-man had attracted a huge crowd of curious 
humanity trying to find out what he could possibly be about, and 
when at the end of every hour, according to Bamum’s directions, 
the man walked as though still intent upon this strange business 
of his, into the museum, quite a little crowd of the curious would 
march up to the ticket office and buy tickets just to enter the 
building and learn, if they could, the secret of his strange doings. 

Not only could Barnum use his wit to attract people into the 
museum, but he also used the same wit on occasion to get them 
out again. Sometimes people would come and bring their lunch- 
eons and stay all day in the building, so crowding it that others who 
wished to come in, had to be turned away and their twenty-five 
cent pieces thus were lost to the coffers of the museum. Once, on 
St. Patrick’s Day, a crowd of Irish people thronged the place, 
giving every evidence, one and all, of intending to remain until 
sundown. Beholding an eager crowd without, pressing to come 
in, and the ticket seller forced of necessity to refuse their quarters, 
Barnum attempted to induce one Irish lady with two children 
to leave the place by politely showing her an egress or way out of 
the building through a back door into a side street. But the lady 
haughtily remarked that she had her dinner and intended to stay 
all day. Desperate then, Barnum had a sign-painter paint on a 
large sign TO THE EGRESS. This he placed over the steps lead- 
ing to the back door where the crowd must see it after they had 
once been around the whole building and seen all there was to see. 
Plunging down the stairs, they read TO THE EGRESS, and 
knowing not at all the meaning of the word, they shouted aloud, 


41 


M Y 


BOOK HOUSE 

“Sure that’s some new kind of animal!” Eager to take 
in everything, they crowded out the door, only to find 
that this wonderful new curiosity was the back street! 

Once, Barnum engaged a band of wild Indians from Iowa for 
the Museum. The party consisted of a number of large, noble 
savages, beautiful squaws and interesting papooses. The men 
gave war dances on the stage with a vigor and enthusiasm that 
delighted the audiences. Nevertheless, these wild Indians con- 
sidered their dances as realities, and after their war dances it was 
dangerous to get in their way, for they went leaping and peering 
about behind the scenes as though in search of victims for their 
knives and tomahawks. Indeed, a rope fence had to be built at 
the front of the stage to make certain that they should not, some 
night, plunge down upon their audience after one of their rousing 
war dances. Finding the responsibility of thus protecting the 
public to be rather heavy, Mr. Barnum decided to ask them to 
change their bill by giving a wedding dance instead of a war 
dance. But the Indians took the wedding dance as seriously as 
they had the war dance. At the first afternoon performance, Mr. 
Barnum was informed that he was expected to provide a large new, 
red woolen blanket at a cost of ten dollars for the bridegroom to 
present to the father of the bride. He ordered the purchase made, 
but was considerably taken aback when he was told that he must 
have another new blanket for the evening’s performance, as the old 
chief would on no account permit that his daughter should be 
approached with the wedding dance unless he had his blanket as a 
present. Mr. Barnum undertook to explain to the chief that no 
blanket was required since this was not a real wedding. The old 
savage, however, shrugged his shoulders and gave such a terrific 
“Ugh!” that Barnum was glad to make his peace by ordering 
another blanket. As they gave two performances a day he was 
out of pocket $120.00 for twelve wedding blankets that week! 

At another time, Barnum had at the Museum some powerful 



42 


THE 


LATCH 


KEY 


Indian chiefs who had come on a mission from the West to Wash- 
ington. Some of these were fine, dignified, splendid types of the 
race, but one was a wiry little fellow known as Yellow Bear. He 
was a sly, treacherous, bloodthirsty savage, who had killed many 
whites as they traveled through the far west in early days. But 
now he was on a mission to the Great Father at Washington, 
seeking for presents and favors for his tribe, and he pretended to 
be exceedingly meek and humble, begging to be announced as the 
“great friend of the white man”. He would fawn upon Mr. 
Bamum and try to convince him that he loved him dearly. In 
exhibiting these Indians on the stage, Mr. Bamum explained the 
names and character of each. When he came to Yellow Bear, he 
would pat him familiarly upon the shoulder which always caused 
the old hypocrite to give the most mawkish grin and stroke his arm 
lovingly. Then, knowing that Yellow Bear did not understand a 
word he said, and thought he was complimenting him, Mr. 
Barnum would say in the 
sweetest voice, “This little 
Indian, ladies and gentle- 
men, is Yellow Bear, chief 
of the Kiowas. He has killed, 
no doubt, scores of white 
persons and he is probably 
the meanest, blackest heart- 
ed rascal that lives in the 
far west.” Here Mr. Barnum 
patted him sweetly on the 
head, and Yellow Bear, sup- 
posing that his introducer 
was sounding his praises, 
would smile and fawn upon 
him and stroke his arm 
while the other continued, 



43 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

“If the bloodthirsty little villain understood what I was saying 
he would kill me in a moment, but as he thinks I am complimenting 
him, I can safely state the truth to you, that he is a lying, 
thieving, treacherous, murderous monster.” Here Mr. Barnum 
gave him another patronizing pat on the head and Yellow Bear, 
with a final pleasant smile, bowed to the audience as much as to 
say that his introducer’s words were quite true and he thanked 
him for the high praises so generously heaped upon him! 

Giants and dwarfs were always a great feature of Mr. Barnum’s 
establishment. At different times he had the celebrated dwarfs, 
General Tom Thumb, Lavinia and Minnie Warren, Commodore 
Nutt, and Admiral Dot. In the darkest days of the Civil War he 
took Commodore Nutt to Washington, and President Lincoln, sad 
and overburdened, left a cabinet meeting to come out for a mo- 
ment’s relief and joke with the little fellow. Mr. Barnum had also 
the famous Novia Scotia giantess, Anna Swan, and, early in his 
career, a French giant, named Monsieur Bihin, and the Arabian 
giant, Colonel Goshen. One day Bihin and Goshen had a terrific 
quarrel. The Arabian called the Frenchman “a Shanghai” and the 
Frenchman called the Arabian “a Nigger!” From words the 
two were eager to proceed to blows. Running to the collection of 
arms in the Museum, one seized the murderous looking club with 
which Captain Cook was said to have been killed, and the other 
snatched up a crusader’s sword of tremendous size and weight. 
Everything seemed ready for hopeless tragedy, but once again 
Bamum’s quick and ready wit saved the day. Rushing in between 
the two enormous and raging combatants, he cried: 

“Look here! This is all right! If you want to fight each other, 
maiming and perhaps killing one or both of you, that is your 
affair, but my interest lies here. You are under engagement to 
me, and if the duel is to come off, I and the public have a right to 
participate. It must be duly advertised and must take place on our 
stage. No performance of yours would be a greater attraction!” 


44 


THE LATCH KEY 

This proposition, apparently made with such earnestness, 
caused the two huge creatures to burst into laughter, after which 
dose of healthy humor, they were unable longer to retain their 
anger, but shook hands and quarreled no more. 

The American Museum was now tremendously successful, and 
in the year 1849, Mr. Bamum left it under the management of 
others, while he attended to the enterprise, which of all other 
exhibitions in his life, he was most proud. This was the bringing 
over to America of the famous Swedish singer, Jenny Lind, the 
“Swedish nightingale,” as she was called, an enterprise quite differ- 
ent in character from any other that Mr. Bamum had ever under- 
taken. But he made it, by his genius for awakening public interest, 
a never-to-be-forgotten success, and Jenny Lind was received 
everywhere throughout the United States and Cuba with almost 
riotous attention, while President Fillmore, General Scott, Daniel 
Webster, and many famous men delighted to pay her homage. 

Barnum’s well earned success had made him very rich, and 
the year before Jenny Lind came to America, he had built himself 
a beautiful home at Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he lived. This 
place he called Iranistan. The house was built in an elegant, 
airy, oriental style, with domes and slender minarets that looked, 
when seen by moonlight, like a fairy palace, taken bodily from 
some Moslem garden across the Bosphorous, and set down there 
by wizardry, amid such different surroundings. At Iranistan he 
lived with his dearly loved wife and daughters. 

He was now a very public-spirited man, engaged in all sorts of 
activities valuable to Bridgeport, always expanding the city, 
making it more beautiful, and using his means unsparingly for 
the benefit of the town. He often encountered old fogies who 
opposed all progress because they had not his far reaching vision 
and could not see with him what would be for the final good of the 
city. But he always managed either to win them over or to get 
the obstacles they raised out of the way, so that the improvements 


45 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

he intended could be carried through, whether it were a new sea- 
side park or a new bridge across the river. His chief interest was 
in East Bridgeport, which lay on the opposite side of the river 
from Bridgeport proper. From pure farm land he turned this 
region into a thriving city, with factories, shops, and houses, and 
he lent money on very generous terms to workmen who wished 
to build homes over there. But in order to make East Bridgeport 
still more prosperous, he once undertook to induce the Jerome 
Clock Company to move there with all its employees and their 
families. He was assured that this concern was a sound and 
flourishing one, but its officers deliberately deceived him. In the 
belief that he was signing notes which should make him responsi- 
ble for a certain moderate amount of money that he was willing 
to risk to repay them for moving, he was tricked into signing 
notes for many, many times more than that amount, until, one 
day, he awoke to find that the Clock Company had failed and he 
himself was a ruined man, responsible for their miserable debts, 
to many times more than the amount of all his fortune. Thus, for 
a stranger concern, with the running of which he had had nothing 
to do, he had lost every penny and had, beside, a mountain of 
debts on his back. For all this, moreover, he had been in no way 
to blame, unless by too great generosity and too honest a faith in 
human nature. Iranistan had to be given up and even the 
American Museum likewise. But in the face of this, his first 
misfortune, Barnum spent not a moment in complaint, dis- 
couragement or self-pity, although petty enemies hounded him 
and many whom he had thought his good friends in his high 
fortunes now turned him a cold shoulder. He set to work at once 
to rebuild his fortunes, and rejoiced, instead of repining, be- 
cause this affair had separated for him his real friends from those 
who had only fawned upon him for what they could get out of him. 

Tom Thumb was one of his real friends who offered to help 
him in any way, and after moving his wife and daughters into 

46 


THE LATCH KEY 

humble quarters, Bamum set out to exhibit Tom Thumb for a 
second time in Europe. For four years now, he worked incessantly, 
exhibiting various curiosities and lecturing, sending every penny 
he could earn back home to pay up his debts. During this 
time, too, occurred a second misfortune, the burning of beau- 
tiful Iranistan to the ground. But Bamum never let anything 
turn him from his purpose and so, in 1860 , he found himself 
at last free from debt and able to buy back once again his beloved 
American Museum. When he appeared on the stage of the 
Museum, and it was publicly announced that he was free of his 
troubles and once again Manager there, the public received him 
with the most tremendous shouts of applause, which showed 
clearly how they respected him, and how through his years of 
honest attempts to bring them happiness, he had endeared himself 
to them. Such a huge demonstration of affection nearly broke 
Barnum down. His voice faltered and tears came to his eyes as 
he thought what a magnificent conclusion this was to all the trials 
and struggles of the past four years. 

Soon after Bamum entered again upon his duties at the Museum 
there came to him a most interesting man, usually known as 
Grizzly Adams, from the fact that he had captured a great many 
grizzly bears at the cost of fear- 
ful encounters and perils. He 
was emphatically a man of pluck 
and had been for many years a 
hunter and trapper in the Rock- 
ies and Sierra Nevada Moun- 
tains. He came to New York 
with his famous collection of 
California animals captured by 
himself. These consisted of 
twenty or thirty immense griz- 
zlies, several wolves, buffalo, elk, 



47 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

and Old Neptune, the greatest sea lion of the Pacific. They had 
come from California on a clipper ship, sailing around Cape Horn. 
Old Adams had patiently trained these animals, too, and at terrific 
cost, for although all of them were docile now with him, there was 
not one of them but at times would give him a sly hit, and some of 
the bears had struck him so many times with their fearful paws 
that they had broken his skull. Old Adams was dressed in a hunter’s 
suit of buckskin trimmed with the skins and bordered with the 
hanging tails of small Rocky Mountain animals; his cap consisted of 
the skin of a wolf’s head and shoulders, from which depended 
several tails, and under this his bushy hair and long, white beard 
appeared. In fact, the man was as much of a show as his beasts. 

Bamum bought a half interest in Adams’ menagerie and erected 
a canvas tent for him. On the morning of his opening, preceded 
by a band of music, the old man had a fine procession down Broad- 
way and up the Bowery. At the head of a train of cages bearing 
his animals, he rode on a platform wagon, dressed in his hunting 
costume and holding two immense grizzly bears by chains, while 
he sat astride of one larger still, the famous General Fremont. 
It was General Fremont who had given Old Adams the last fatal 
blow on his head, although he had since become so docile that 
Adams had used him as a pack bear to carry his cooking and hunt- 
ing apparatus, and had even ridden on his back for hundreds of 
miles through the mountains. The old man pluckily insisted on liv- 
ing for months and exhibiting his bears, in spite of his broken skull. 

In 1861, Bamum heard of some white whales that had been 
seen in the lower St. Lawrence, and he set out at once to capture 
one. On a little island in the great river, inhabited by French 
Canadians, he engaged twenty four fishermen to capture for him 
two white whales alive and unharmed. Scores of these creatures 
could at all times be discovered by their spouting within sight 
of the island. The men made a V shaped pen in the water, leaving 
the broad end open. When a whale got into this pen at high 

48 


THE LATCH KEY 

water, the fishermen closed the entrance with their boats making 
a tremendous noise and splashing to keep the whale in until 
low tide. Then the huge creature was left high and dry with 
too little water to swim in and so was easily captured. A noose 
of stout rope was slipped over his tail and he was thus towed 
to a large box lined with seaweed and partially filled with salt 
water. When two of these creatures were captured, Bamum went 
back to New York, sending out word in all directions at what 
time the whales were to pass through various towns on the line. 
Thus he drew tremendous crowds to the train to see the creatures. 

During the Civil War Bamum was too old to fight, but he 
sustained his part loyally at home, and in 1865 was elected to the 
Connecticut legislature. He soon discovered in Hartford that 
the rich railroad interests had long had undue influence with the 
legislature and were getting bills passed very advantageous to 
themselves, but wholly unfair and detrimental to the people. 
Being no politician, but an honest man, Barnum set himself at 
once to remedy this evil, defeat the railroad interests, and restore 
justice to the people. He was making a great speech to this 
effect in the legislature after weeks of determined work to line- 
up voters against the railroads, a speech intended as his crowning 
effort to induce the passage of bills that would defeat their unjust 
schemes when the following telegram was handed him. 

“American Museum in flames. Its total destruction certain.” 

Bamum read the telegram containing this terrific news with- 
out a sign of discomposure. Then he laid it calmly and coolly on 
his desk and continued his speech, speaking so logically and 
eloquently that he carried his point and won the legislation 
against the railroads. It was not until this was accomplished that 
he made known the calamity which had befallen him and returned 
to New York. The destruction of the Museum was complete. 
In a breath had been wiped out the accumulated results of many 
years of incessant toil. Barnum had lost another fortune. More- 

49 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

over, he was now fifty-five years old and might well have thought 
himself too old to start out life anew, but he did no such thing. 
He set about at once to establish a new American Museum, send- 
ing agents all over Europe and America to gather curiosities, and 
at the end of four months he had opened Bamum’s New Museum. 

Three years later, Mr. Bamum was sitting with his wife and a 
guest at breakfast one cold winter morning, and carelessly glancing 
over the newspaper when he suddenly read aloud, “Hallo! Bamum’s 
Museum is burned!” 

“Yes,” said his wife, with an incredulous smile, “I suspect it is.” 

He had read the announcement so coolly and with so little 
excitement that his wife and friend did not believe it, and yet it 
was true. A third disastrous fire had wiped out his new museum. 
When he returned to New York he found its ruined walls all 
frozen over with water from the fire hose, the entire front with its 
ornamental lamp posts and sign one gorgeous framework of trans- 
parent ice, that glistened beautifully in the sun. 

Now, at last, the celebrated showman decided to retire from 
active business and live on the remnant of his fortune. He tried 
hard to content himself with such a life of leisure, traveling about 
the United States, hunting buffalo with General Custer on the 
plains of Kansas, and for several years endeavoring in every way 
to amuse himself. But this experience only showed him that a 
life of inactivity was absolutely unendurable. He decided con- 
clusively, once and for all, that the only true rest is to be found 
in useful activity, and by 1870 he had bigger plans than ever. He 
now determined to devote himself entirely to a great traveling 
circus, far larger and better than anything that had ever been 
done before. On this circus he labored unremittingly, confident 
that if he devoted his best energies to the public, the public 
would liberally repay him. Perceiving that his show was too 
gigantic to be moved in the old way by wagons he now for the 
first time arranged with railroads to transport it, using seventy 


50 


THE LATCH KEY 

freight cars, six passenger cars and three engines. The circus was 
a tremendous success. People crowded to the various places of 
exhibition, coming not only from the towns where the show was 
held, but from neighboring towns as well, some on excursion trains, 
and some by wagons or on horseback, often camping out overnight. 

Two years later, on the day before Christmas, Bamum was 
sitting at breakfast in a hotel, thinking comfortably how he had 
arranged for his circus to be shown in New York in order that his 
vast host of men should not be thrown out of employment during 
the winter, when once again a telegram was handed him saying 
that a fourth fire had completely destroyed this circus. This 
time Bamum had no thought of giving up again. He had decided 
beyond the shadow of a doubt that there were no real misfortunes 
in the world, and that what seemed even an overwhelming mis- 
fortune was only an opportunity for rising to greater accomplish- 
ments. Therefore he merely interrupted his breakfast long enough 
on this occasion to go out and send immediate cables to his Europ- 
ean agents to duplicate all his animals within two months. He 
then went back and finished his meal. By the first of April he 
placed on the road a combination of curiosities and marvels far 
surpassing anything he had ever done before. 

But great as this circus was, Bamum was never satisfied to 
rest on his laurels. He aimed to do something greater still. In 
1874 while he still continued the traveling circus he opened in New 
York a great Roman Hippodrome. This gorgeous spectacle began 
every evening with a Congress of Nations, a grand procession of 
gilded chariots and triumphal cars, conveying Kings, Queens and 
Emperors, each surrounded by his respective retinue, and all in 
costumes made with the greatest care to be historically correct. 
This vast pageant contained nearly one thousand persons and 
several hundred horses, beside elephants, camels, llamas, ostriches, 
elands, zebras and reindeer. The rich and varied costumes, 
armor and trappings, gorgeous banners and paraphernalia, as well 


51 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

as the appropriate music accompanying the entrance of each 
nation, produced an effect at once brilliant and bewildering. The 
entire press said that never before since the days of the Caesars 
had there been so grand and interesting a public spectacle. 

Most of Mr. Barnum’s competitors in the circus field in those 
early days were men of very inferior aims and abilities, content 
with poor and inferior, even vulgar shows, aiming only to make 
money, and inspired with little of that desire to give in the biggest 
sense the best and finest entertainment possible, which made Mr. 
Barnum so different from the others. But in 1880 he found a 
rival worthy of his mettle in the person of Mr. James A. Bailey. 
The very moment that Mr. Barnum perceived Mr. Bailey to be 
a man with the same big aims and ambitions as himself, as well 
as the same solid business sense, far from feeling any jealousy 
and trying to drive him out of the field, he entered at once into 
negotiations with him and took him into partnership. This part- 
nership with Bailey lasted throughout the remainder of Barnum’s 
life. They opened their combined show with a street parade by 
night in New York, all beautifully illumined by calcium lights. 

This huge circus now when it traveled had its own cars. No 
longer were the trains hired as of old from the railways. Advance 
agents and advertising cars, gorgeous with paint and gilding, con- 
taining paste vats, posters and a force of men, would pass through 
the country weeks ahead of the circus, pasting up the billboards 
and arousing the interest of the community. The circus itself 
was packed up in the smallest possible space, its men trained 
with military promptitude and precision to work like clockwork and 
make every move count in erecting or taking down the huge can- 
vas city. The performers slept in their cars and ate in the canvas 
dining tent. Hundreds of men were employed and the expenses 
of the concern were four or five thousand dollars a day. 

One of the most interesting feats of Barnum’s later years was 
the purchase of Jumbo, the largest elephant ever seen. Jumbo 


52 


THE LATCH KEY 

was the chief ornament of the Zoological Gardens in London, and 
a great favorite with Queen Victoria whose children and grand- 
children were among the thousands of British youngsters who had 
ridden on Jumbo’s back. Mr. Bamum never supposed that 
Jumbo could be purchased, nevertheless he made a liberal offer 
for him to the Superintendent of the Gardens and his offer was 
accepted. When it became publicly known that Jumbo had been 
sold and was to depart for America, a great hue and cry was raised 
in England. Newspapers talked of Jumbo before all the news of 
the day and children wrote supplicating letters to the superin- 
tendent begging that he be retained. Nevertheless the super- 
intendent persisted and Jumbo had to go. 

When the day of his departure arrived there came a great tug- 
of-war. As the agents tried to remove Jumbo, Alice, another 
elephant who had been for sixteen years Jumbo’s companion and 
was called in fun his “wife”, grew so excited that her groans and 
trumpetings frightened all the other beasts in the Zoo who set up 
such howlings and roarings as were heard a mile away. Midst 
such a grievous farewell, Jumbo was led forth into the street. 
But when the great beast found himself in such unfamiliar sur- 
roundings there awoke in his breast that timidity which is so 
marked a feature of the elephant’s character. He trumpeted 
with alarm and turned to reenter the garden only to find the gates 
of his paradise closed. Thereupon he straightway lay down on 
the pavement and would not budge an inch. His cries of fright 
sounded to the uninitiated like cries of grief and attracted, a huge 
crowd of sympathizers, many of them in tears. Persuasion had 
no effect in inducing Jumbo to rise and force was not permitted, 
for Mr. Bamum always insisted strictly that his animals be gov- 
erned by kindness, not by cruelty. And indeed it would have 
been a puzzle what force to apply to so huge a creature as Jumbo. 
In dismay Mr. Barnum’s agent sent him the following cable; 
“Jumbo has lain down in the street and won’t get up. What 

53 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

shall we do?” Bamum immediately replied, “Let him lie there 
a week if he wants to. It is the best advertisement in the world.” 

After twenty-four hours, however, the gates of the garden 
were reopened and Jumbo permitted to go in again. Barnum’s 
agents now decided to take the huge beast in another way. A 
great cage on wheels was provided and moved up close to the door 
of Jumbo’s den. When the elephant had been induced to enter 
the cage the door was closed and the cage was dragged by twenty 
horses to a waiting steamer where quarters had been prepared for 
Jumbo by cutting away one of the decks. Thus he was brought 
to America, and later Mr. Bamum acquired Alice likewise. 

In 1884 Mr. Bamum got the rarest specimen of all his zoo, a 
royal sacred white elephant from Burmah. The animal was 
not pure white as had been supposed in Europe but was grayish. 
No European monarch had ever succeeded in getting one of these 
elephants into a Christian country for the Siamese and Burmese 
people believed that if a sacred white elephant left their country 
some dire misfortune would come upon them. Bamum’s agents 
many months before had purchased a white elephant, but on the 
eve of its departure, its attendant priests gave it poison rather than 
permit it to fall into Christian hands. Finally, however, after 
three years of patient persistence, diplomacy and tact, as well as 
an outlay of a quarter of a million dollars, Bamum succeeded 
through his agents in getting from King Theebaw at Mandalay in 
Burmah, the sacred white elephant, Toung Taloung. He came 
to America in all his gorgeous trappings, accompanied by a Bur- 
mese orchestra and retinue of Buddhist priests in full ecclesias- 
tical costume. 

Mr. Bamum built for his great show enormous winter quarters 
at Bridgeport. A ten acre lot was enclosed and in this enclosure 
numerous buildings were constmcted. There was an elephant 
house, kept heated at just the right temperature naturally required 
by these animals, where thirty or forty elephants could be luxuri- 


54 


THE LATCH KEY 

ously housed and trained; another building held lions, tigers and 
leopards, which require a different temperature, and still another 
housed camels and caged animals. The monkeys had roomy 
quarters all to themselves where they could roam about and work 
their mischievous will unrestrained. The hippopotami and sea- 
lions had a huge pond heated by steam pipes and here the elephants 
also were permitted their supreme enjoyment, a bath. There was 
a nursery department for the receipt and care of new-born animals, 
and in the various buildings many of the beasts were permitted to 
leave their cages and frolic at large. 

In 1887, when Bamum was fast asleep in the middle of the 
night, a telegram arrived, stating that a fifth great fire had totally 
destroyed these splendid winter quarters. His wife awoke him 
at two o’clock in the morning and told him of the telegram. 

“I am very sorry, my dear,” he said calmly, “but apparent 
evils are often blessings in disguise. It is all right.” And with that 
he rolled back into his original comfortable position and in three 
minutes was once again fast asleep. 

Bamum was now seventy-seven years old, but with the help 
of his partner, Mr. Bailey, he rose as triumphant from this last 
fire as from all the others and soon had a better circus than ever. 
To the end of his days his energy, pluck and healthy ambition gave 
the people a better, completer and cleaner performance than has 
ever been given by any other showman. With his kindly face 
beaming, he often said, “To me there is no picture so beautiful 
as ten thousand smiling, bright-eyed, happy children, no music so 
sweet as their clear, ringing laughter. That I have had power, 
year after year, by providing innocent amusement for the little 
ones, to create such pictures, to evoke such music, is my proudest 
and happiest reflection.” 

BATES, CLARA DOTY (American, 1838-1895) 

Mrs. Bates was a writer of stories and poems for children. 
BENNETT, HENRY HOLCOMB (American, 1863-) 

Mr. Bennett is known chiefly for his stories of frontier Army life. 

55 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

BJORNSON, BJORNSTERNE (Norwegian, 1832-1910) 

In the year 1832 a small boy was born in 
the rugged land of Norway. As he grew 
older the lad seemed a wild and unruly little 
fellow, and the forces at work within him as 
strong and untamed as the powerful sea that beat up on Norway’s 
rock-bound coast. At school he was the despair of his tutors. Try 
as they would, they could never arouse in him the smallest interest 
in any of the regular studies. His parents even thought seriously 
of sending their son to sea in the hope that he might be tamed by 
the stem discipline of a sailor. But at last, with great difficulty, 
young Bjornson passed the entrance examinations for the Univer- 
sity of Christiana, and there he suddenly found the line of activity 
to which he could devote all that bounding energy that had here- 
tofore mn away with him. 

He discovered that at this time there was no national drama in 
Norway. Actors on the stage were giving light French comedies, or 
parading through the heavy action of some German play, or pro- 
ducing the latest Danish novelties from Copenhagen. At this 
miserable state of things young Bjomson’s patriotism took flame. 

“Danish actors and plays must go!” he cried. “Let us have 
a real Norwegian drama!” And he set himself immediately to 
write Norwegian plays. But when the first fire of his patriotic 
wrath had cooled, he was forced to admit that at that time the 
Danish theatre was far superior to the Norwegian, and if he really 
wished to do something fine for Norwegian literature, he would 
have to swallow his pride and be willing to leam of Denmark. 
Accordingly, at the age of twenty four he set out for Copenhagen, 
there to study patiently all there was to leam. Henceforth, the 
boy whom tutors had been unable to drive to work that did not 
interest him, labored and worked without ceasing. His Norway 
should have a literature. 

He wrote first a story called Synnove Solbakken, which was 

56 




the latch key 

different from anything else that had ever been done in Norway. 
Heretofore it had been the fashion for Norwegian authors to write 
romantic tales of Italy or some other far-off land, but Bjomson 
had the courage to seek his material right at home. He wrote 
about Norway and homely Norse peasant-life with an utter sim- 
plicity and freshness that were all his own. Never before had 
Norse peasant life been so sympathetically studied and so beauti- 
fully portrayed. Bjornson’s work became instantly popular. 

On his return from Copenhagen, Bjomson was made editor 
of The Norse People’s Journal, but he also became director of 
the National Theatre in Bergen, and now at last, he began to pub- 
lish in rapid succession a series of national dramas, the subjects of 
which were taken from the old Norse or Icelandic sagas. As in 
his novels he had aimed to bring into literature the type of the 
modem Norse peasant, so in his dramas he strove to present what 
was most thoroughly Norse out of Norway’s historic past. 

As time went on, a still more serious purpose took root in 
Bjornson’s heart. He was no longer satisfied with mere literary 
beauty in his work. It was no longer his ambition only to please 
and amuse. He began to see clearly the faults that existed in 
Norwegian society, and to wish to bring home to the Norwegian 
people some recognition of these faults and a real desire for reform. 
So now he spoke out plainly and depicted these faults in his dramas. 
Most particularly it was the oppression, injustice and cold con- 
ventionality of the upper classes as opposed to the modem work- 
man’s world that he so strikingly portrayed. Naturally, these 
plays of his cost him much of his popularity with “people of qual- 
ity.” Many a nobleman now turned him a decided cold shoulder. 
Nevertheless, such work revealed in him a still higher sense of 
patriotism than that of his earlier days, and a truer and far more 
unselfish devotion to the best interests of his people. 

From now on, Bjomson took a strong interest in the politics 
of his time. He proved an eloquent orator and wielded great in- 


57 


MY BOOK HOUSE 


fluence in obtaining more liberal government. He believed whole- 
heartedly in a republic, but was opposed to the use of violent means 
to establish it in Norway. In 1880 he traveled through the United 
States, studying how a republic really works out in practice, and 
lecturing with great success to his countrymen in the West. 

During the later years of his life Bjornson was awarded the 
Noble prize for literature, the greatest honor which the world to- 
day can bestow upon an author. He has proved to be one of the 
greatest poets, dramatists and novelists that Norway has ever 
known, and in addition to this, he was the most Norwegian of 
all Norwegian writers. 


BLAKE, WILLIAM (English, 1757-1827) 

William Blake was the Arst English poet to express in his 
verse the thoughts and feelings of little children. Other poets had 
written of grown people, but Blake in his Songs of Innocence saw 
straight into the heart of the little child and for the Arst time 
uttered what was there in poetry. Blake was an engraver, too, 
and he decorated his poems with beautiful designs which were 
afterwards colored by hand. As he grew older, Blake lost the 
joyousness with which he had written Songs of Innocence, and wrote 
the sad and bitter Songs of Experience. Then, alas! men said he 
was mad, but his Songs of Innocence remain his loveliest work. 



SONGS OF INNOCENCE 
Little lamb, who made thee. 

Dost thou know who made thee. 
Gave thee life and bade thee feed, 
By the stream and o'er the mead? 



SONGS OF EXPERIENCE 
Tiger, tiger, burning bright, 

In the forests of the night. 

What immortal hand or eye 
Could frame thy fearful symmetry? 


BROWN, ABBIE FARWELL (American, contemporary) 

Abbie Farwell Brown was bom in Boston and educated at 
Radcliffe College. She has traveled a great deal in Europe, is 
unmarried and has contributed many short stories to magazines. 

The Lonesomest Doll John of the Woods The Flower Princess The Christmas Angel 

58 


KEY 


THE LATCH 

BROWNE, FRANCES (Irish, 1816- ?) 

K ERE is the story of a little girl who was blind from the 
time she was eighteen months old, who never saw with her 
eyes the blue sky, the green trees, the fresh spring flowers, 
and yet found within herself a great, wide, beautiful, 
wonderful world which she saw far more vividly and could de- 
scribe to others far more clearly than many who could see. 

Frances Browne was born in the little mountain village of 
Donegal in Ireland, in the year 1816. She was the seventh of 
twelve children, and her father, the village postmaster, was in the 
poorest circumstances. Because she was blind, Frances was not 
given the education that was freely offered to her brothers and 
sisters, and by them so little valued; but with persistent deter- 
mination she fought her way to that knowledge. Every evening 
she used to listen when her brothers and sisters recited their lessons 
aloud in preparation for the next day’s classes, and would learn 
what they said by heart, untiringly reciting it to herself when 
everyone else was asleep, to impress it upon her memory. During 
the day, she would hire her brothers and sisters to read to her by 
promising to do their share of the household tasks in return. Thus, 
in exchange for numberless wipings and scrubbings in the kitchen, 
she received lessons in grammar, geography and various other 
subjects. Whenever her offer of doing their work failed to win 
her brothers and sisters, she would engage their services by repeat- 
ing to them stories which they themselves had read and long ago 
forgotten, or by inventing for them the most interesting and fanci- 
ful tales of her own. 

There were no book stores in Stranorlar or within three coun- 
ties round about, nor were there any spare pennies at home with 
which to buy books. So Frances borrowed treasured volumes 
from all who came to the house and from everyone in the village. 
And thus as time passed, she acquired a better education than 
many a child who could see. 


59 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

From the age of seven, Frances began to write poems, but when 
she was fourteen she heard the Iliad read and was so impressed 
with its grandeur, that her own poems seemed paltry things and 
in utter disgust she threw them into the fire. It was not until she 
was twenty-four years old that a volume of Irish songs was read 
to her and her own music thus reawakened. She now wrote 
several poems which were offered to various magazines, and to her 
great joy and astonishment, accepted and printed. After this, 
her work began to be successful and the first use to which she put 
her earnings was to educate a sister to read to her and be her sec- 
retary. In 1847 she set out for Edinburgh to begin her literary 
career, taking with her the sister-secretary and her mother, and 
assuming, blind though she was, the responsibility for supporting 
all three of them. In Edinburgh she wrote steadily anything she 
was asked to write, tales, sketches, reviews, poems, novels, and 
stories for children. Her industry was amazing, and though she 
never earned a great deal of money, she made friends with some 
of the greatest men and women of the day, and was always able 
to fulfill her affectionate purpose of caring for her mother. 

Frances Browne’s best loved works were her stories for children, 
and of these, the most popular was Granny’s Wonderjul Chair 
which was written in 1856. For many years this interesting book 
was out of print, but in 1887 Frances Hodgson Burnett republish- 
ed it with a preface, under the title Stories From the Lost Fairy 
Book, retold by the child who read them. Since then, Granny’s 
Wonderjul Chair has returned to its rightful place in children’s 
literature. 

How wonderful was the richness of that world which this 
blind girl found within her own darkness! Nowhere in all her 
works is there a word of complaint about her blindness; there is 
only the giving forth of a wealth of joy and beauty. How did a 
writer who never saw a coach or a palace, or a picture of a coach or 
a palace, tell so convincingly of coaches and palaces and multi- 

6o 


THE LATCH KEY 

tudes? Whence came her vivid 
word-pictures of the little cottage 
on the edge of a great forest 
with tall trees behind, the swal- 
lows building in the eaves, the 
daisies growing thick before the 
door? A love of nature was in 
her soul. In spite of her blind- 
ness she found within herself a 
wonderful perception of the 
beauty of the world. With her 
poet’s spirit she saw all the green 
and leafy places of the earth, all its flowery ways — while these were 
trodden heedlessly, mayhap, by those about her with the gift of sight. 
It was amazing, too, the wonderful reach of her knowledge — her 
stories are of many lands and many periods, from the French 
Revolution and the scenery of Lower Normandy, to the time of the 
Young Pretender in England; from the fine frosts and clear sky, 
the long winter nights and long summer days of Archangel, to the 
banks of the Orange River in Africa. And she was perfectly at 
home, whether she told of shepherds on the moorland, the green 
pastures dotted with snow white sheep, or whether her fancy dived 
beneath the sea midst hills of marble and rocks of spa. 

Indeed, the story of Frances Browne’s life is scarcely less 
interesting than her own wonderful books of fancy, and there has 
never been a nobler example of the fact that circumstances can 
never conquer a strong and beautiful spirit. She who in poverty 
and blindness could secure her own education and press on through 
every obstacle to the most complete development of her powers, 
giving to the world a wealth of joy and beauty, and never a word 
of complaint, has indeed left in her own life as beautiful a story 
as could ever be written. 

Important Works: Granny's Wonderful Chair. 

6l 



MY BOOK HOUSE 

BROWNING, ELIZABETH BARRETT (English, 1806-1861) 
BROWNING, ROBERT (English, 1812-1889) 

In a most picturesque and lovely home in the Malvern Hills, 
near Wales, there lived once with ten lively brothers and sisters, 
a little girl named Elizabeth Barrett. The country round about 
that fine old place was wonderfully green and beautiful; 



Dimpled close with hill and valley. 
Dappled very close with shade; 



Summer snow of apple blossoms 
Running up from glade to glade. 


And the little girl drank in the loveliness of it all as she raced 
and chased and romped about with her brothers and sisters. She 
was very fond of books, too, and when her best beloved brother, 
Edward, began to study Greek with a tutor, she joined him and 
used to sit in her little chair with her book in one hand and a doll 
tenderly cherished in the other, persistently twisting her tongue 
around the strange Greek words. Ever after, Elizabeth continued 
to love the old Greek stories and to study them. Sometimes she 
said that she dreamed more often of Agamemnon than of Moses, 
her beautiful black pony. One year the little girl had a great 
flower bed laid out in the garden. It was shaped like an enormous 



62 


THE LATCH KEY 

But when she was fourteen years old she wrote a long poem of 
fifteen hundred lines, all about one of the Greek stories she loved. 
It was called “The Battle of Marathon,” and her father thought 
it so remarkable that he had it published. 

The girl was a wonderfully graceful, dainty little creature, of 
a slight, delicate figure, with a shower of dark curls falling on either 
side of a most expressive face. Her eyes were large and tender, 
richly fringed by dark lashes, and her smile was like a sunbeam. 

One day, when she was fifteen, Elizabeth decided to go for a 
ride on her pony, Moses. But Moses was not brought up, ready 
and harnessed, exactly on the moment when she wanted him, so, 
in a fit of impatience she flounced out after him into the field. 
There she attempted to saddle him herself, but as she did so, she 
fell and the saddle came crashing down on top of her. The result 
of her impatience was that she was severely hurt, and there followed 
for her years of invalidism, during which she never went out again 
in the same old free way, to ramble over the hills and romp in 
the out-of-doors. 

As time passed she went to live in various different places, for 
a while in Torquay in beautiful Devonshire, but wherever she 
went there hung over her almost continuously this cloud of illness. 
The long days when she was confined to her room she spent in 
study and in writing poetry for various magazines, but for many 
years her chief means of communication with the outside world 
was by means of letters only. Nevertheless, these letters of hers 
were always bright and vivacious with small mention of her 
troubles. Little by little, the young woman, thus so constantly 
confined to a sick room, grew to be a well known poet. It is note- 
worthy, too, that the poems she wrote under such conditions had 
no hint of weakness, but were rather remarkable for their strength. 

One day a great man, one of the greatest of English poets, 
wrote Elizabeth Barrett a letter in admiration for her work. This 
great man was Robert Browning, and Elizabeth Barrett admired 

Robert Browning: The Pied Piper of Hamlin . An Incident of the French Camp. 

63 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

his work as much as he did hers, so that they soon began writing 
regularly to one another. The outcome of their correspondence 
was that Mr. Browning came one day to see the delicate little 
lady and induced her to marry him, although she thought herself 
too weak and ill to marry anyone. Her new joy and happiness, 
however, lifted her out of her invalidism and almost transformed 
her. Mr. Browning carried her off with him to live beneath the 
warm and sunny skies of Italy and here the two spent all the rest of 
Mrs. Browning's life. It was chiefly in the interesting old town of 
Florence, with its hoary, gray stone buildings and its splendid 
treasures of art, that they lived. Mrs. Browning took the keenest 
interest in the Italian people who were just then struggling for 
their independence, and as she looked down on the ardent young 
patriots from the windows of her home, the famous Casa Guidi 
palace, she wrote poems full of love and sympathy for them. 
Indeed, her poetry is always full of the deepest and tenderest 
feeling and the truest love for all that is just and good. 

It was in Florence, too, that a little son, Robert, was born to 
Mrs. Browning, and the mother, who by now had become the 
greatest of living women-poets, had as much joy in all the wonder- 
ful things her little boy did as any less famous mother. 

The life of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning was re- 
markably happy together. They visited Venice and all the most 
beautiful spots in Italy and were absolutely one in the love, ad- 
miration and devotion which they bore* to one another. Frequently 
they were visited by friends, many of whom were Americans, and 
whoever was fortunate enough to be the guest of the Brownings 
in their happy home, always came away deeply impressed with 
the beautiful family life he had seen there. 

When Mrs. Browning died, the citizens of Florence, grateful 
for her love and sympathetic understanding, placed on the wall 
of Casa Guidi a marble tablet sacred to her memory. Mr. Brown- 
ing and his little son then went sorrowfully back to England. 

Elizabeth Barrett Browning: Casa Guidi Windows; Aurora Leigh. 

64 


THE LATCH KEY 



BRYANT, WILLIAM CULLEN (American. 1794-1878) 

One of the descendants of that arch little Puritan maiden, 
Priscilla Mullins, and her bashful lover, John Alden, was a small 
boy named William Cullen Bryant. William was bom in the 
beautiful hilly country of Cummington, Massachusetts, fit 
cradle for a real poet of Nature. His father, Dr. Peter Bryant, 
was a country physician, and he used to love to wander with his 
sons out into the wild woodlands and up into the hills, keen-eyed 
and alert to each flash of little woodland creatures through the 
leaves, loving them all and lifting up his heart with joy for all 
Nature’s ways of beauty. Dr. Bryant was a lover of the English 
poets, too, and even used sometimes to write verses of his own. In 
the long winter nights, when the snow lay white on the world 
without and a roaring fire blazed on the cosy hearth within, he 
would often read aloud to his children from the treasures of his 
library which was one of the largest in the neighborhood. During 
the day the boys went to the public school, but when the school 
hours were over they raced out into the woods and fields, exploring 
all the country round about. 

It was their habit, too, on these delightful rambles, to recite 
aloud to an audience of tall trees, scurrying rabbits, or even stones, 
the verses which they had been reading at home. Cullen partic- 
ularly delighted in this happy custom, and often on his walks he 
composed and recited little poems of his own. One of these early 

6s 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

verses he delivered in his school room, in his eleventh year, and it 
was afterwards published in the county newspaper, The Hamp- 
shire Gazette. The subject chosen for his poem by this ambitious 
youngster of eleven was, “The Advance of Knowledge.” 

When Cullen grew to young manhood he was sent to Williams 
College, but his father was too poor to permit him to finish his 
education at Yale University, as he had hoped, and so for a time 
he pursued his studies at home. It was at this period, when he 
was still little more than a youth, that, as he was one day wander- 
ing in the tangled depths of the rich primeval forest, his medita- 
tions framed themselves into that beautiful poem, Thanatopsis. 

To him who in the love of nature holds 
Communion with her visible forms , she speaks 
A various language; for his gayer hours 
She has a voice of gladness , and a smile 
And eloquence of beauty; and she glides 
Into his darker musings with a mild 
And healing sympathy , that steals away 
Their sharpness ere he is aware . 

Having written the poem down on paper he laid it aside and 
appears to have forgotten it altogether. It was not until some 
six years later that his father accidentally discovered it, took it to 
Boston and had it published. It produced a decided impression 
at once, for no American poet had yet written anything to equal it. 

From this time forth, though Cullen had been educated for a 
lawyer, he continued to devote himself to literature. In 1825, he 
became editor-in-chief and part proprietor of the New York Even- 
ing Post, a position which he held for fifty years. During all that 
time, by means of his articles in the Post, he helped to direct the 
current of national thought into the wisest and best channels. 
These important articles he had a habit of scribbling down on old 
envelopes and scraps of waste paper of which he always hoarded 
a generous store. The sincerity and earnestness with which he 
presented his principles and his quick native sense of justice, 

66 


THE LATCH KEY 

as well as his complete independence of all managing politicians, 
soon made of his paper a great power in the land. 

When the question of the abolition of slavery began to be 
agitated, Bryant in the Post, took the side of the Abolitionists. 
This stand was decidedly unpopular in those days and brought 
down upon it a storm of abuse. The Post then began to lose 
favor with the public and it was only by the most persistent strug- 
gles that Bryant kept it alive against the tense and growing prej- 
udices of the community. Mr. Bryant, however, refused to 
surrender a single one of his convictions, although he was de- 
nounced and deserted by many of his former friends, and was more 
than once threatened by the violence of the mob. 

In 1860 he was one of the presidential electors who chose 
President Lincoln, and ever afterward he enjoyed the confidence 
and friendship of Lincoln. During the dark days of the Civil 
War, when all too many deserted and betrayed that gaunt, lone 
figure in the President’s chair, Bryant stood firmly by him, ever 
aiding and supporting him, and no other journal was more instru- 
mental than the Post in bringing about the great changes of 
public opinion which ended in the destruction of slavery. 

Thus, the middle years of Bryant’s life were too busy with hard 
work to leave much time for poetry. But when the years of 
national storm and stress were ended, he undertook his most 
ambitious literary work — translations of the Odyssey and the Iliad. 

Mr. Bryant lived to be a very old man. He was the first 
American poet to win permanent distinction and he exercised 
a mighty influence over the younger literary men of America. 

Important Works: Thanatopsis The Fountain To a Waterfowl 

BURGESS, GELETT (American, 1868-) 

Gelett Burgess was born in Boston. He was a draughtsman 
and instructor in topographical drawing at the University of 
California, but he is known chiefly as the author and illustrator 
of several whimsical books for children. 

Important Works: The Lively City o' Ligg Goops and How To Be Them 
67 


MY BOOK HOUSE 


BURGESS, THORNTON (American, 1874-) 



HORNTON BURGESS was bom in Sand- 
wich, Massachusetts, and spent all his boy- 
hood in the fields, the woods and marshes 
around this Cape Cod Town. Here he hunt- 
ed, fished and made acquaintance with all the 
animals and birds. For some time he wrote 
nature articles for various magazines under 
the name of W. B. Thornton, but in all his 
spare moments he was out of doors, walking or boating, and 
studying wild life. At length he was made one of the editors 
of Good Housekeeping and it was in that magazine that he first 
won his name as a story teller for children. 

His fascinating tales were first told to his own children, and 
for all that Peter Rabbit, Reddy Fox, and all the rest frisk 
through his stories in little coats and vests, trousers and hats, 
their habits are nevertheless as accurately true to the life of each 
animal as though his books were scientific nature studies. 

Important Works : The Adventures of Peter Cottontail The Burgess Bird Book 


BURNS, ROBERT (Scotch, 1759-1796) 

N a tiny, one-room, mud cottage near the village of Ayr 
in Scotland was born little Robert Burns. The boy’s 
good father had built the hut with his very own hands, 
but its walls were so frail that only a week after the little 
fellow’s birth, when there came up a violent gale, the 
house was blown into mins. In the dead of night, 
mother and child were carried to a neighbor’s dwelling for shelter. 

A sturdy farmer was Mr. Burns and he meant his children to 
have an education. Accordingly, he and four of his neighbors 
hired John Murdoch to keep a school for their baims and this 
kindly Scotsman lived in turn for a few weeks at a time with each 
of the different families. Little Robert, it is true, liked to play 
truant. He loved each “wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower,” 



68 



THE LATCH KEY 

each “cowerin', timorous beastie” of the field, and the “sweet 
warbling woodlark on the tender spray” far better than his lessons. 
He loved, too, the “wild, mossy mountains,” where grouse led 
their coveys through the heather and shepherds piped while they 
tended their sheep. Nevertheless, with infinite patience, Mur- 
doch overcame the boy's truancy and won him to his studies. 

Now there was at this time in the Burns' household an old 
woman named Betty Davidson, who knew more tales than any- 
one else in the country concerning fairies, ghosts and devils. In 
the eerie dusk of the cottage firelight, Robert sat at old Betty's 
knee and soaked in stories of witches and warlocks, of wrinkled 
beldames and withered hags, which were later to make a riot of fun 
through his poem of Tam o' Shanter. His mother, too, taught 
him the early romances and history of Scotland, arousing in 
his breast the deepest tenderness for his country. Many a time 
the little fellow was to be seen strutting down the village street in 
the wake of the drums and the squealing bagpipes. Later, 
while he followed the plough through the fresh-turned fields, he 
always had a book of ballads held up before him, and when the 
village blacksmith gave him a life of William Wallace to read, off 
he must go on the very first fine summer's day to explore every den 
and dell in Leglen Woods where Wallace was said to have hidden. 



69 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

When Robert was fifteen years old, he worked once in the 
golden glowing harvest field by the side of a lassie who sang like 
a bird for sweetness. The sight and sound awoke in his heart 
the gift of song and called forth from him his first poem. 

A sturdy, tender, affectionate lad was Robert Bums, but when 
he grew to be a youth he was sent to the country dancing school, 
and there he fell in with evil companions. Later, too, he met cer- 
tain smugglers who plied their trade in the deep-hidden caves of the 
bare and rocky Ayrshire coast, and was attracted by their lawless 
ways and speech. He began to frequent the taverns, to drink 
and join in many a riotous revel. And so the poor lad's life could 
go but from bad to worse. His father died leaving a burden of 
debts; the farm was poor, crops failed and Robert found himself, at 
last, tangled and fast-bound in a host of difficulties. The only way 
out seemed to be for him to leave his country for far-off Jamaica. 

In order to raise the passage money of nine pounds to take 
him to Jamaica, friends urged Bums to publish the poems which 
he had so long been writing. And thus appeared his first vol- 
ume of verse. It was instantly praised and Bums at once 
became popular. Instead of going to Jamaica, he went to Edin- 
burgh. From the little farm in Ayrshire he made his way to 
the fine old city which towered up proudly before him from 
Holyrood to the Castle, picturesque and smoke-wreathed by day, 
by night a climbing tier of lights and cressets. In Edinburgh 
he suddenly found himself a lion, feted and praised by all. 

But alas! success in the city was short-lived. Bums recog- 
nized very shortly that he was wholly out of sympathy with the 
standards of the world. His downright honesty could not endure 
to bow and scrape before men of high rank who had no abilities 
whatsoever. How could he, whose heart was yearning to pay 
honor to whom honor was due, endure to meet at a great man's 
table Squire Somebody or Something, and see a fellow whose 
abilities would scarcely have made an eight-penny tailor and 


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THE LATCH KEY 

whose heart was not worth three farthings, meet with all the 
fawning notice and attention which were withheld from a man 
of genius, merely because he was poor? This was a state of affairs 
never to be endured by the man who could write: 

Is there for honest poverty 

That hangs his head and a ' that? 

The cowar a slave , we pass him by , 

We dare be poor for a’ that! 

For a ' that and a ' that , 

Our toils obscure and a ' that , 

The rank is but the guinea stamp; 

The man's the gold for a ' that! 

What though on hamely fare we dine , 

Wear hodden- grey and a ' that; 

Gie fools their silks and knaves their wine , 

A man's a man for a' that . 

For a' that and a' that , 

Their tinsel show and a' that; 

The honest man , though e'er sae poor , 

Is King o' men for a' that . 

Ye see yon birkie called a lord , 

Wha struts and stares and a' that; 

Though hundreds worship at his word , 

He's but a coof for a' that . 

For a' that and a' that , 

His ribband , star, a’ 

The man of. independent mind. 

He looks and laughs at a ' that. 

In the very heyday of his success in Edinburgh, Bums began 
to see that he should have to return to the country, don his “hodden- 
grey” once again and follow the plough. Accordingly, he turned 
his back on the city and married a country girl. Then he settled 
down to a small farm at Ellisland, with high hopes that here he 
should be happy. But poor Burns! In spite of his warm heart and 




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love of laughter, he was too weak 
and yielded too easily to temptation 
ever to be happy. The taverns and 
ale-houses saw him far too fre- 
quently again. How then could he 
make Ellisland pay? In a short 
time he had to sell it. With his 
wife and children he moved into the 
little town of Dumfries. And now 
he was separated from all that rustic 
country life and picturesque, rural 
scenery that had been his inspiration. He turned down no more 
daisies in the field; the horned moon hung no longer in his window 
pane; he saw no more rosebuds in the morning dew, so pure among 
their leaves so green. Amid the dirty streets, the gossip and dissi- 
pation of a third-rate Scottish town, he was neither in harmony 
with himself nor with the world. And so, at the age of thirty-one, 
worn out and old before his time, the greatest poet of Scotland died. 

Robert Bums’ songs came to him as naturally as the carol 
to the blackbird. In one short summer’s day he dashed off all 
of Tam o' Shanter. His songs are full of laughter, full of tears 
and so immensely tender. In his heart was a great sympathy 
which reached out to all mankind, and to beasts and flowers of 
the field as well. He makes us smell the new-turned earth, the 
breath of kine, and the milk-white thorn that scents the evening 
gale, and yet his deepest interest was in men — in men and women, 
lads and lassies. First and foremost he was the poet of the fire- 
side and the hearth, of the wee white cottage glinting through the 
trees, with smoke slow curling from its peaceful ingle-nook, where 
wait some thrifty wife and wee, sweet bairns to welcome home their 
Dad. His touch falls on men’s souls like the touch of tender 
hands and of all great men from the North Country there is none 
who holds in his countrymen’s hearts a place like Robert Bums. 

Important Works: Tam O' Shanter To a Mountain Daisy 

The Cotter's Saturday Night For a' That and a' That 

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BURROUGHS, JOHN (American, 1837-1921) 

John Burroughs, the beloved student of woodsman’s lore, was 
bom in Roxbury, New York, and from his childhood always 
loved the woods and fields. Hidden away in the hills, in the in- 
finite quiet and seclusion of the woods, he built the home called 
Slabsides and there, for many years he lived, while his admirers and 
friends made loving pilgrimages there to see him. 

Important Works: Wake Robin Fresh Fields Winter Sunshine Signs and Seasons 


BYNNER, WITTER (American, 1881- ) 

Witter Bynner is one of the most modem of American poets, 
conspicuous as a writer of free verse. He was graduated from 
Harvard in 1902 and became assistant editor of McClure's Mag- 
azine. Later he was instructor in English in the University of 
California, and has spent a year in China collecting Chinese poetry. 



BYRON, GEORGE GORDON, LORD (English, 1788-1824) 

STORMY life was that of the handsome little 
Lord Byron, who at ten years of age inherited the 
estate and title of his great-uncle. Shy and lonely 
he was, fond of solitude, yet capable, too, of the 
fieriest attachments. He loved animals, but of the 
ferocious kind. A bear, a wolf and a bull dog were his pets at 
different periods. Lord Byron was lame from his birth and yet he 
took many a prize as a sportsman. He excelled particularly in 
swimming, and once, like Leander, swam across the Hellespont. 

So headstrong was young Lord Byron that his whole life was 
darkened by his own ungovemed passions. His restlessness often 
drove him to travel and he described his travels in Europe in 
the poem Childe Harold which made him famous. Having wasted 
his youth, Byron determined to redeem himself in 1823 by going 
to help the Greek people, who were struggling to free themselves 
from the outrageous rule of the Turks, but while he still labored for 
the Greeks he was taken ill and died. 

Important Works: Childe Harold 


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CARMAN, BLISS (Canadian, 1861- ) 

Bliss Carman was bom at Fredericton, New Brunswick. At a 
meeting of Canadian authors in 1921, he was crowned with a wreath 
of maple leaves as the most distinguished poet of Canada. 

Important Works: Songs from Vagabondia 

CARROLL, LEWIS (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) 1832-1898 
Once there was a man and he was born in Cheshire, 
the county made famous as being the home of the grin- 
ning Cheshire cat! He was a lecturer on mathematics 
at Oxford University and wrote very deep and learned 
books with such awful sounding names as Mathematica 
Curiosa. But sometimes, this same most learned professor used to 
go out on golden afternoons in a boat with three little girls. The 
little girls would make believe that they could row the boat and 
busily pretend to guide its wanderings down the placid stream. 
Then they would all talk at once and beg the professor to tell them 
a story, and order him to put in lots of nonsense and fun and plenty 
of wild and new adventures! So the professor forgot that he was 
a professor and began to tell them a tale. O, such a tale as he 
told! While Mathematica Curiosa is long ago forgot, the story 
that he spun out on those golden afternoons, drifting down the 
dreamy river, with three little girls telling him just what to do and 
interrupting him every minute, that is the story that made him 
famous -Alice in Wonderland. 

CATHER, KATHERINE DUNLAP (American, contemporary) 
Katherine Dunlap Cather was bom in Navarre, Ohio. 
She taught school in various places in California and did news- 
paper work in San Jose and San Francisco, always uniting with 
these activities much public work in story-telling. For years she 
has been a favorite contributor to St. Nicholas and other magazines. 

Important Works: Educating by Story Telling. Boyhoods of Famous Men 

CAWEIN, MADISON JULIUS (American, 1865-1914) 

A writer of exquisite nature poetry, born in Kentucky. 



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CERVANTES, MIGUEL de (Spanish, 1547-1616) 

A quaint, little old market place in a little old town in Spain and 
a crowd of simple folk gaping about a band of strolling players. 
There sat young Miguel and watched them, open mouthed with 
interest. A blanket hung over two ropes in the open square formed 
the sole decoration of this theatre and the actors went through the 
performance wearing worn old beards and wigs and clad in naught 
more elegant than white sheepskin dresses trimmed with gilt lea- 
ther. Crude! And yet Miguel drank it all in, and the verses of 
those comedies remained fixed in his memory. Sometimes the 
young fellow took a hand himself at writing verses, but he liked 
adventure best and longed to be up and doing. 

As soon as the opportunity offered, Miguel left Spain and was 
off to Rome to become a page in the household of an envoy of the 
Pope. But the life of a page, bowing and scraping, was intolerably 
slow and ineventful so he soon resigned his post and enlisted as 
a soldier in a Spanish regiment in Italy. 

At this time Pope Pius V was organizing a Holy League 
against the Turks, whose barbarous conquests and inroads into 
Europe were alarming all Christendom. This league consisted 
of the Pope, Venice and Spain, and their forces were to be com- 
manded by the famous Don John of Austria, a brilliant general 
who was half brother to King Philip II of Spain. The fleet of 
these three states was the largest that had ever sailed under a 
Christian flag. It consisted of galleys rowed by a large number 
of criminals under sentence. In the Turkish fleet the oarsmen 
were all Christian slaves. The object of the allies was to recover the 
island of Cyprus from the Turks. But before they had sailed so 
far they fell in with the enemy, and fought in the Gulf of Lepanto. 

Miguel de Cervantes was acting only as a common soldier 
aboard one of the Christian galleys on that great day, but he be- 
haved with conspicuous heroism. He placed himself at the head 
of a dozen men and took a position exposed to the hottest fire of 


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the enemy. From here he boarded one of the Turkish galleys 
and engaged in a hand to hand conflict with the fierce and barbarous 
foe. In the course of the battle he received three gunshot wounds, 
two in his breast and one shattering his left hand, which was 
maimed for the rest of his life, but his conduct won for him the ap- 
plause of all his comrades. The Christian fleet was victorious. 
One hundred and seventy Turkish galleys were captured and 
15,000 Christian galley slaves set free. 

A great storm followed this mighty victory, and Don John 
sailed away with his wounded men to Messina. Here Cervantes 
was given a special grant of money for his distinguished services, 
but so eager was he to be at the front again, that as soon as his 
wounds were healed, off he went to rejoin Don John. A second 
attempt to destroy the Turkish fleet, however, met sorry defeat 
and was followed by a long campaign in Africa. Cervantes and his 
comrades at last took the city of Tunis whose white walls had so 
long defied them. But alas! they held Tunis for only a very short 
time. Soon the Turks recaptured it and came swarming in again. 

Thus passed four long years of struggle, during which time 
Cervantes had known all the hardships of war, the joys of victory 
and the sorrows of defeat. Having been away from home six years, 
and finding himself now worn and wounded in his country's serv- 
ice, he at length asked leave to return to his native land. This 
permission was granted him and he left Naples on a galley called 
El Sol, bearing letters from Don John to the King, in which Don 
John recommended him as “a man of valor, of merit and of signal 
services." But just as Cervantes, and his brother, Rodrigo, who 
was his companion, were rejoicing at sight of the Spanish coast 
which lay glistening before them and smiling a welcome home, 
there bore down upon them suddenly a squadron of Turkish pirates 
under a hideous captain who was the terror of the Mediterranean. 
Then followed a desperate fight, but the pirate galleys were too 
strong. Cervantes and a number of Spanish comrades were cap- 

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tured and carried off to Africa. There they found themselves 
placed at the mercy of a savage Greek who was noted for wild 
ferocity. As letters were found on Cervantes from Don John of 
Austria, he was believed to be a prize of great value, for whom a 
large ransom might be demanded. Heavily loaded with chains, 
he was sent off to Algiers, which, for centuries, was the stronghold 
of the fierce Algerian pirates. The city climbed, tier above tier, in 
gleaming white stone up the hillside from the coast, to be crowned 
by an ancient fortress, and there amid the narrow, dirty streets, 
the rich, heavily scented Oriental bazaars, Cervantes was held for 
five years a prisoner, subject to every caprice of his conqueror, 
and treated with sternest severity. 

During his captivity, however, the sturdy Spaniard never once 
lost his courage nor his gay and cheerful humor. Adversity brought 
out the finest qualities of his character. Persistently and with great 
ingenuity he organized plans of escape, the failure of one plan 
never deterring him from setting to work at once to prepare an- 
other. On one occasion he even succeeded in getting himself and 
a party of comrades out of the city, but at the critical moment, 

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a Moor who had been engaged to act as their guide, treacherously- 
deserted them. The fugitives were obliged to return to Algiers 
and Cervantes was severely punished. The next year a sum of 
money was sent over by the parents of Cervantes, but it was not 
sufficient to induce the corsairs to release him. Instead, they let 
his brother, Rodrigo, go. Rodrigo set out for home with secret 
instructions to request that a war vessel be sent from Spain to 
rescue the others. Cervantes himself set about at once making all 
necessary arrangements to escape on this vessel. He gathered to- 
gether about fifty Spanish fugitives and concealed them in a cave 
outside the city, actually managing to have them supplied with 
food for six months while they waited. At last, after these long 
months of patient endurance, the day came when the ship was to 
be expected. Cervantes and his comrades were in readiness to 
board her at once. But, just when freedom seemed so certainly 
in sight, a traitor once again betrayed their secret to the pirates. 
A force of armed Turks discovered their hiding place and captured 
them. Cervantes immediately took on himself all the blame for 
their scheme of flight, declaring that he, alone, was responsible. 
Though he was threatened with torture and even death, he re- 
fused to implicate any one of his comrades. The terrible governor, 
Hassan Pasha, before whom Cervantes was brought, was a monster 
of cruelty and did not hesitate, as a rule, to hang, impale or muti- 
late his prisoners, but on this occasion he was overawed by Cer- 
vantes’ astounding fearlessness, and did little more than threaten. 

Still a third and fourth plan of escape were devised. At last, 
two merchants agreed to provide an armed vessel in which sixty 
captives were to embark. This ship lay ready at hand when a 
Spanish monk, who hated Cervantes, revealed the plan to the 
Turks. Cervantes, himself, might have escaped even then, if he 
had gone off at once with the merchants and left his comrades be- 
hind. But nothing could induce him to desert his companions in 
distress. Instead, he came forward once more and gave himself 

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up to the Governor. He was bound and led with a rope around 
his neck before Hassan. This time he fully expected to be hanged, 
or, at least, to have his nose and ears cut off, and, indeed, what 
would have happened to Cervantes had not Hassan still hoped to 
obtain a high ransom for him, no one can tell. As it was, he con- 
demned him to five months’ close confinement in chains. 

At last, at the end of five years, friends and relatives in Spain 
raised sufficient ransom money to set the captives free. And thus, 
after eleven long years’ absence, Cervantes made his way home. 
He reached Spain to find his family impoverished, his patron, Don 
John of Austria, dead, and no one to speak a good word for him 
to the haughty and selfish King Philip II. Spain at this time, in 
1580, was at the very height of her power, dominating the world 
by land and sea, wringing gold, gold, gold from her people at 
home and bearing it in great treasure ships from her distant 
colonies in Mexico and Peru. Imperial ambition and the worship 
of force were the keynotes to Philip’s character, and he had little 
time to waste thought on a worn-out soldier like Cervantes. What 
heartaches were in store in Spain for the gallant Spaniard! His 
services, his work, his sufferings were all forgotten — and yet from 
these trials also he emerged sweetened and strengthened, still in 
possession of his gay courage and his dauntless good humor. 

In the most straitened circumstances, he married and settled 
down, and now there was naught to do, but to take up once more 
his old pastime of writing. The most popular Spanish writer of 
the day was one Lope de Vega. He wrote plays by the score and 
was rich and honored, with many powerful friends, while Cervantes 
had no friends and no crumb of royal favor. In face of these dis- 
advantages, and struggling against poverty, he wrote his greatest 
work, Don Quixote. No sooner did this book appear in 1605, 
than behold! it found instant favor with the people. But literary 
men criticized it, and Lope de Vega, from his height of superiority, 
wrote, “No poet is so bad as Cervantes nor so foolish as to praise 
Don Quixote.” 


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The books people read in those days were mostly romances of 
chivalry, recording the absurd adventures of wonderful knights- 
errant who wandered about rescuing captive princesses from castles 
and performing miraculous deeds of prowess, all written quite seri- 
ously. Cervantes, with his knowledge of life as it really was, wished 
to ridicule this sort of literature and show up its absurdity. That is 
what he did in Don Quixote , but so fertile was his imagination and 
so varied had been his own experiences, that at the same time he 
succeeded in getting into his book a wonderfully graphic picture of 
Spanish life in his day, bringing in all classes of society, and also 
recounting many of his own adventures as a soldier. Moreover, 
the broad humanity he had learned in his hard Algerian experi- 
ences, permeated with its sweet spirit all of the story. 

See him, old Don Quixote , a ridiculous figure in a way and yet 
a most delightful gentleman filled with generous and high minded 
sentiments. In spite of the absurdity of his adventures he is 
always courteous and kindly, the champion of the down-trodden 
and the protector of the weak. From the name Don Quixote the 
word “quixotic” has crept into nearly every language in the civi- 
lized world and conveys precisely the knight's character. It means 
a man with impossible, extravagantly romantic and chivalrous 

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notions, who is yet a true champion of the right and a real reformer 
at heart. Great as the book was, however, nobody guessed in 
those days that it was to be one of the greatest books in the world, 
translated into more foreign languages than any other, except the 
Bible and Pilgrim's Progress. 

Cervantes continued to live for some time after this in squalid 
poverty, cooped up with his family in the poorest part of Vallodolid. 
In 1616 he died in Madrid and was buried with no ceremony. No 
stone or inscription marks his grave. Thirty years later, when Lope 
de Vega died, grandees bore his coffin, bishops officiated at his 
funeral and the ceremonies lasted nine days. Ah! when will the 
world learn to judge the real value of men! Today, Lope de Vega 
with all his splendor, is quite forgotten, while few names are more 
highly honored everywhere than that of Miguel de Cervantes. 

Don Quixote retold by Judge Parry , illustrated in color by Walter Crane. 

CHAMISSO, ALBERT von (French-German, 1781-1838) 

Albert von Chamisso was a young French boy of noble family 
who was obliged to flee from France in the terrible days of the 
French Revolution. He became a page to the Queen of Prussia 
and later served his term in the German Army. He wrote very 
charmingly, both poetry and prose, but in his adopted language, 
German, not in his native French. The best known of his stories 
was told to amuse the children of a friend, and has been translated 
into many foreign languages. It is the Story of Peter Schlemihl, the 
tale of a man who lost his shadow. 

CHAPMAN, ARTHUR (American, 1873-) 

Arthur Chapman was born in Rockford, Illinois. He 
was at one time reporter on the Chicago Daily News 
and later managing editor of the Denver Times. He 
is the author of two volumes of poetry, chiefly poems 
of the west. 

Important Works : Out Where the West Begins. Cactus Center 

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CHAUCER, GEOFFREY (English, 1340-1400) 

N days when all the fire of chivalry still burned in 
knightly breasts, there dwelt at the court of Edward III 
in England, a young page named Geoffrey Chaucer. 
Clad in red and black breeches, with a short cloak and 
elegant shoes, he attended upon his mistress, the wife of 
Prince Lionel, Edward's son, at many a gay festivity at 
court. Much he learned there of the ways of gentles, and many a 
time he sat in some tapestried chamber, amid embroidered lords 
and ladies, while someone read a graceful poem in French of the 
style then fashionable at court. Ere long, young Geoffrey him- 
self began to write poems after the manner of the French. 

When he was barely nineteen, Geoffrey went off over seas with 
the King to the wars in France. There he conducted himself right 
nobly until he was taken prisoner in a disastrous English retreat. 
For some months he languished in captivity, but he stood so well 
in favor with the King, that Edward himself at last paid his ransom. 
Thereafter, behold Geoffrey in the King's own household and 
risen to be a squire with an annual salary and a gift of a suit of 
clothes each Christmas-tide. Soon, too, he wedded one of the 
Queen's demoiselles, a lady named Philippa. 

A man of kindly and gentle humor and great courtliness was 
Chaucer, and as the years passed on, his royal master sent him on 
more than one important diplomatic mission to foreign parts, now 
to Genoa, now on a very secret affair to Flanders, and now to 
France. What a deal of the world Geoffrey Chaucer saw on his 
travels, and how he was touched with the warm-glowing charm of 
Italy! Thenceforth, the poems he wrote were no more after the 
graceful and tender but slight and shallow manner of the French. 
They were full of the rich life and color of Italy's powerful writers, 
Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. 

But Chaucer was not only a courtier, a poet, a soldier, a diplo- 
mat. He was also a man of business. For some years he was 

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Comptroller of Customs at the Port of London and had to be 
continually at the wharves. His business was to watch the trade 
in wools, in hides and skins, and with his very own hands to make 
a record of the same. On the wharves he made acquaintance with 
stevedores and sea-going men and saw human nature of quite a 
different sort from that he had known at court. Indeed, whatever 
task throughout his life Geoffrey’s royal masters set him, and he 
lived in the reigns of three different kings, Edward III, Richard II 
and Henry IV, he always performed the same with credit, whether 
it were the carpenter’s task of erecting a scaffold at Smithfield 
whence the King and Queen might view the jousts, or the diplo- 
mat’s task of arranging a marriage for his King. The height of 
his success came in 1386 when he sat in Parliament in all his glory 
as a Knight of the Shire from Kent. Thereafter Chaucer’s op- 
ponents at court gained the upper hand. He was deprived of most 
of his offices and obliged, henceforth, to live in comparative poverty. 

But now what new life for his poetry ! At last he wrote no more 
after the French or Italian fashion but developed a full, rich 
English style of his own. Heretofore, French had been the lan- 
guage of the court and English regarded as rude and vulgar, but 
Chaucer was the first great poet to make the homely English 
tongue the language of a new and splendid literature. His greatest 
work was * Canterbury Tales, a rich and colorful picture of Old 



* Chaucer Story Book by Eva March Tappan: Story of the Canterbury Pilgrims by F. J. H. Darton 

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England in those stirring Middle Ages. There they wend their 
way along the white and dusty Kentish road, that company of 
pilgrims on their horses, journeying to the shrine at Canterbury. 
From every walk of life they come, — knight, squire, monk and 
miller, doctor, merchant, meanest churl; and as they journey they 
tell their precious tales, now one all courtliness of phrase, now 
the broad and coarser humor of the churl, and, throughout, 
such vivacity of movement, such tender play of feeling, such rich 
and merry humor and such delight in nature, in all the “smale 
foweles” that “maken melodye,” the wood-dove and the throstle, 
in sunshine and soft breezes, in April’s fresh, sweet showers. The 
greatest poet of his period was Geoffrey Chaucer, and when he 
died he was the first of England’s poets to be buried in Westminster 
Abbey, now sacred to the memory of the greatest of her great. 
COLERIDGE, SAMUEL TAYLOR (English, 1772-1824) 

There was once a youth who was so starved and hungry after 
knowledge, that having gained access to a library through the 
good offices of a friend, he devoured every book in the place, 
going straight through the racks from one end to the other! 
He had many odd and original ideas, too, had Samuel Coleridge, 
and dreamed many a poet’s dream. Being dissatisfied with the 
world as it was, he once planned a Utopia or ideal state, a brotherly 
community where selfishness should be no more and only goodness 
reign. This Utopia he hoped to found on the banks of the Susque- 
hanna River in America and his plan only failed for lack of funds. 
Later, Coleridge went to live in the lovely Lake Country of 
England, and became a friend of the poet, Wordsworth. His poems 
are weird and romantic, like The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. 
CONKLING, GRACE HAZARD (American, contemporary) 

Mrs. Conkling is professor of English at Smith College. For 
some time she lived in Mexico and many of her poems reflect her 
enjoyment of things Mexican. Her wonderful little daughter, 
Hilda, has written a volume of most beautiful child verse. 

Important Works: Afternoons of April Wilderness Songs 
Poems by a Little Girl , by Hilda Conkling 

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COOKE, EDMUND VANCE (Canadian, 1866-) 

Mr. Cooke is a Canadian poet, bom in Port Dover, Canada. 
COOKE, FLORA J. (American, contemporary) 

Miss Cooke is principal of the Francis Parker School, Chicago. 

Important Works: Nature Myths for Children. 

COOLIDGE, SUSAN (Sarah Chauncey Woolsey) 1848-1894. 

Susan Coolidge was bom in Cleveland, Ohio, and came of a 
family distinguished for its scholars, its cultured men and women. 
Her most popular children’s stories are The Katy Did Series. 
COOPER, GEORGE (American, 1840- ? ) 

A writer of songs and poems for children’s magazines. 
COX, PALMER (Canadian, 1840- ) 

Palmer Cox was bom in Granby, Quebec, a Scotch settlement. 
Here he grew up, his mind filled with such tales as Scottish people 
tell of their favorite little elves, the Brownies, who do many a 
kindly deed for good folk in the dead of night. This is how he 
came as a man, to write his fascinating stories of The Broivnies. 
CRAIK, DINAH MARIA MULOCH (English, 1826-1887) 

Miss Muloch thought her father, a clergyman, did not live 
up to his principles in his treatment of her mother. So in an 
indignant moment, she took her mother and brothers away from 
home and supported them by her writing. After she became Mrs. 
Craik she wrote her children’s stories for her own little ones. 

Important Works: Adventures of a Brownie. The Little Lame Prince. 

CRANDALL, C. H. (American, 1858- ) 

A reporter, correspondent and editor of The New York Tribune. 

Important Works: Chords of Life. Wayside Music 

CROKER, THOMAS CROFTON (Irish, 1798-1854) 

An Irish antiquary and humorist, bom in Cork. 

Important Works: Fairy Legends of the South of Ireland. Legends of the Lakes 

DASENT, SIR GEORGE WEBB (English, 1817-1896) 

An English scholar and author who wrote chiefly of the Norse, 

Important Works: The Norsemen in Ireland. Story of Burnt Njal. 

Heroes of Iceland. Vikings of the Baltic. 

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CHARLES (English, 1812-1870) 

N a dirty, grimy blacking factory in London, 
amongst the roughest companions, once worked a 
delicate little fellow named Charles Dickens. He 
was only nine years old, shabbily dressed and under- 
fed, and day after day he drudged, week in and week 
out, pasting blue labels on pots of blacking. His 
mother was a sweet and energetic lady, but his father was of that 
kindly, easy-going sort who can never support their families, and 
now he was shut up in the wretched Marshalsea, the squalid prison 
where men were confined who could not pay their debts. The 
boy’s work was bitterly uncongenial to him. He longed so to go 
to school and in his secret heart had always dwelt the ambition to 
be a “learned and distinguished man.” 

When he was still a small child, Charles had lived in the country. 
In those days his father owned a few good books which the boy de- 
voured with eagerness. For weeks at a time he was not Charles 
Dickens at all, but was living in fancy the life of some one of his 
heroes. Armed with a broken rod from an old pair of boot-trees, he 
would be Captain Somebody or other of the Royal British Navy. 
Then he would be beset by savages and purchase his life at the cost 
of a fearful scrimmage. Every bam in the neighborhood, every 
stone in the church, every foot of the churchyard had some asso- 
ciation in his mind connected with his books. Now he sees one of 
his heroes climbing the village church steeple; now 
there stands another with knapsack at his back, 
stopping to rest by the wicket gate, and over at the 
village ale-house in the genial firelight, there he sees 
quite clearly a certain club of worthies from his 
books holding their evening gossip. Sometimes the 
little fellow, with his fancies and his secret ambitions, 
would tramp for miles just to look at an elegant red 
brick house that stood on Gad’s Hill and imagine to 
himself that it was his and he lived in it. 



DICKENS, 



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THE LATCH KEY 

But now here he was in London, living in wretched 
squalor, carrying things to sell to the pawn-broker, 
tying up pots of blacking and visiting his father in 
the miserable Marshalsea. The contrast of such an 
existence with the ideals of his fancy served to im- 
press all the more strongly on his mind the odd scenes 
and queer characters of that poor and dirty London. In 
spite of his unhappiness he began, too, to see the humorous side of 
men and things, to draw funny pictures of the barber who came 
to shave his uncle, and the charwoman who helped his mother. 

At length his father got out of prison and Charles was allowed 
two years of schooling at Momington. But he was soon forced to 
go to work again and now had time only for spare moments of study 
in the British Museum. By the time he was nineteen, however, he 
had fitted himself to be a reporter and heard and reported the 
lively discussions in Parliament, sitting up in the gallery. 

When he was only twenty-two, Dickens wrote some sketches 
which were published as Sketches by Boz. These became popular at 
once, and three years later Pickwick Papers made him famous. A 
novelist of the poor, before all else, was Charles Dickens, and how 
wonderfully rich and varied was his knowledge of all types of men 
and women from the London streets, knowledge gained in that hard 
school of the blacking factory. True, he saw 
men and women in a delicious vein of humor, 
but he often wrote most seriously, too. He 
can make you cry as well as laugh and his 
books always win your sympathy for the poor 
and the oppressed. Altogether, he made the 
world more charitable in its judgments and 
left it a far more tender and gracious place 
than he found it. 

So, at last, Charles Dickens became indeed 
a “distinquished man,” and bought for his own that elegant, red 
brick house on Gad’s Hill, where he lived for the rest of his days. 

Important Works: David Copperfield Great Expectations Oliver Twist 

Dombey and Son Old Curiosity Shop Christmas Carol 

87 





MY BOOK HOUSE 

DICKINSON, EMILY (American, 1830-1886) 

All her life long Emily Dickinson lived in Amherst, Massa- 
chusetts, a life most people would have thought intolerably dull, 
but to Emily herself it was rich and full. She knew intimately all 
the country round about. To every bud, bird and butterfly she was 
kin. She wrote poetry, too, startling and original verse, bound by 
no laws of rhyme or rhythm, but full of vigor and deep convictions. 
'The mere sense of living is joy enough !” she once said. To her, 
God was an ever-present friend and death a freer living. 

DODGE, MARY MAPES (American, 1838-1905) 

Mary Mapes Dodge was the daughter of an eminent writer and 
scientist whom she often helped in his work. She lived in New York 
as a child and studied under tutors but never went to school. Only 
a few years after her marriage she was left a widow with two small 
boys and she took up writing as a means of support. From reading 
Motley's Dutch Republic she was inspired to write Hans Brinker , 
every chapter of which was submitted for criticism to two Dutch- 
men who lived near. Once, her own son went into a shop in Amster- 
dam and asked for a good book to read. The shop-keeper handed 
him Hans Brinker . In 1873 Mrs. Dodge became the first editor of 
St. Nicholas and it was she who made it a leading magazine. 
DRAKE, JOSEPH RODMAN (American, 1795-1820) 

An American poet, of the same family as Admiral Drake. 
EATON, WALTER PRICHARD (American, 1878-) 

A dramatic critic and writer of delightful nature essays. He 
once lived in New York, but on a vacation trip he was entranced by 
a beautiful garden in Stockbridge, Mass, and went back to the 
City only long enough to pack up his possessions. 

Important Works: Boy Scouts in Glacier Park On the Edge of the Wilderness 

EELS, ELSIE SPICER (American, contemporary) 

Mrs. Eels is a specialist in Hispanic folk lore. She spent three 
years in Brazil where her husband was superintendent of the 
schools established by the Presbyterian Board of Missions. 

Important Works: Tales of Enchantment from Spain Fairy Tales from Brazil 
88 


THE LATCH KEY 

GEORGE (Mary Ann Evans) English, 1819-1880 
N a bright, frosty morning, in old England’s picturesque 
stage-coach days, a little girl and her brother stood before 
the gate of Griff House, just at the bend of the highroad, 
waiting eagerly for His Majesty’s mail coach to go dash- 
ing by. And now they hear the far-off, ringing beat of 
the horses’ hoofs on the ground. Ah! there the great coach comes 
flashing into view with its four gallant greys at full speed — coach- 
man and guard aloft in scarlet, outside passengers muffled in furs, 
and baskets and bulky packages dangling merrily at the rear. 

That coach was the chief connecting link between Griff and 
the outside world, and little Mary Ann Evans and her brother, 
Isaac, watched for it every day. For Griff was a country 
place in the Midland section of England and remote enough from 
the world it seemed in those days of no railways, no penny post, 
and no telegraph. A charming, red brick, ivy-covered house it was, 
on the Arbury estate which Mary Ann’s father managed for its 
owner. Here, day in and day out, the little brother and sister 
played. Mary Ann was always at her brother’s heels, doing 
whatever he did, and nothing was missing at Griff House to make 
them happy. There was a delightful, old-fashioned garden, a 
pond and a canal to fish in. There were farm offices close to the 
house, a long cow-shed and a broad shouldered bam, where but- 
ter and cheese were made by their energetic mother. 

An affectionate and impulsive but proud little Maggie Tulliver 
was Mary Ann, and sensitive to the highest degree, moved easily to 
either smiles or tears. Moreover, she was always troubled by 
jealousy in her affections. All her life long she wanted to be all 
in all to somebody and have somebody all in all to her. How then 
could she fail but be often most unhappy? In her childhood, the 
somebody whom she loved so jealously was Isaac, her brother. 
She had an older sister, Christiana, or “Chrissy,” who was always 
as neat and tidy as Mary Ann was frowsy-haired and wild. But 

89 


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MY BOOK HOUSE 



Chrissy, because of her neatness, was a great favorite with her 
three worthy aunts, Mrs. Evans' sisters, who were doubtless very 
like Maggie Tulliver's aunts, the highly superior Dodsons, and 
she used to spend a great deal of time with them, so that the 
younger boy and girl were left much alone together. But, alas! 
Mary Ann's jealous affection for Isaac suffered tortures when they 
were separated, he to go to boys' school, and she to a girls'. How 
she looked forward then to the coming of the holidays and how 
anxious she was when he came home to know all that he had been 
doing and learning since they parted. And when she was seven 
years old and Isaac was given a pony, to which he grew so at- 
tached that he cared less and less to play with her, Mary Ann was 
nearly broken-hearted. 

In those days, if one had looked into the Griff dining room on 
a Saturday night after tea, he would have seen a pretty sight. 
There in the deep, leather-covered armchair at the right of the 
ruddy fire-place sits the father, powerful and middle-aged, with 
strongly-marked features. Between his knees crouches Mary Ann, 
and he is explaining to her a pretty book of pictures. Her features 
are strong like her father's, and her rebellious hair is all in her eyes, 


90 


THE LATCH KEY 

much to the sorrow of her mother who sits busily knitting on the 
opposite side of the fire. Near the mother, all prim and tidy, 
is the older sister with her work, and between the two groups is 
the boy, who keeps assuring himself by perpetual search that none 
of his favorite means of amusement is escaping from his pockets! 

Mr. Evans was already very proud of the astonishing and 
growing intellect of his little girl. Now, when she came 
home for the holidays, she and Isaac would devise and act out 
charades before their aunts and the Griff household, and these 
were so cleverly done that even the aunts had to admit that 
their niece of the rebellious hair was a person of real ability. 

From a very early age Mary Ann was accustomed to accompany 
her father on his drives through the neighborhood. Standing 
between his knees as he drove leisurely along, she drank in eager 
impressions of the country and its people. In the Warwickshire 
of those days they passed rapidly from one phase of English life 
to another. Now they drove through the countryside with green 
fields and hedge-rows stretching away as far as the eye could see, 
and all the people they met were farmers and countryfolk; now 
they passed a fine old park which shut in some noble mansion 
house and allowed just a glimpse of its treasure to shine here and 
there through the trees. Grey 
steeples there were, too, pricking 
the sky, and green and shady 
churchyards. Then, in another 
moment they would come upon 
barren land all blackened with 
coal-pits, and look down suddenly 
over a village dingy and dirty 
with coal dust. Soon they would 
clatter along on the pavement of 
a manufacturing town. Powerful 
men they saw here, grimy with 



9i 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

coal dust and walking queerly with knees bent outward from long 
squatting in the mines. These men were going home to throw 
themselves down in their blackened flannels and sleep through the 
daylight. In the evening they would rise and spend a good share 
of their wages at the ale-houses with their fellows. Everywhere 
were poor cottages and small, dirty children, and over all the 
busy noise of the loom. From windows and doorways peered the 
pale, eager faces of the handloom weavers, both men and women, 
haggard with sitting up late at night to finish their toilsome labors. 
These people made a deep impression on Mary Ann. They had 
no right whatever to vote, and had long been ground down by 
the tyranny of their masters. Such towns were often the scene of 
trades-union meetings and riots, and once, when Mary Ann was 
thirteen years old, she saw one of these riots in the town of Nun- 
eaton. It was in the year 1832, when the King had been forced, 
after determined opposition, to let the Reform Bill pass, and for 
the very first time, the poorer people had been given the right to 
vote for members of Parliament. So eager were they to elect their 
own candidate and keep out the representative of the wealthier 
classes, that they formed in a mob threatening and attacking 
those who wished to vote for their opponents. The magistrate 
had to call out the Scots Greys to quell the riot, but on the arrival 
of the soldiers the tumult increased until it assumed alarming 
proportions. The magistrates themselves were attacked and in- 
jured in the very discharge of their duties. Several officers of the 
Scots Greys were wounded and two or three men, who were at- 
tempting to reach the polls, were dragged from the protecting 
files of soldiers, cruelly beaten and stripped naked. This unhappy 
outburst of hatred, caused by so many years of oppression, was 
never forgotten by Mary Ann. 

An old fashioned child she was, living in a world of her own 
imaginations, impressionable to her finger tips, thinking deeply 
already, and often at odds with the hard and fast accepted beliefs 


92 


THE LATCH KEY 

of her time. She was full, too, of an eager love for all that was 
beautiful and longed in her inmost heart to achieve something 
great, though she often blackly despaired of ever doing anything. 

When Mary Ann was sixteen years old her mother died, and 
soon after this her brother and sister married, so that she became, 
henceforth, housekeeper and sole companion to her dearly beloved 
father. As long as he lived she spent the greater part of her time 
with him in their remote country home. But when he died, she 
found her way, through the help of friends, out into the greater 
world. For years, now, she wrote and wrote, translations and 
articles, translations and articles, but it was not until she was a 
woman of middle age that she found the work which really made 
her famous. It was suggested to her then that she write a novel, 
and what should she write about but that old Midland English 
life which she knew so well and with which she had sympathized 
so deeply? All at once she found that she could write of men and 
women so truly and sympathetically that here lay her real life 
work. Under the name of George Eliot she published a number 
of novels. 

George Eliot was the first English novelist to see in life simply 
human character developing, and to find all the stirring comedy and 
tragedy of her books, not in outward events, but in the hearts and 
souls of men, their inward victories and defeats. And so the little 
girl of Griff House became England’s greatest woman novelist. 

Important Works: Silas Marner Romola The Mill on the Floss 

EMERSON, RALPH WALDO (American, 1803-1882) 

One of America’s greatest essayists, philosophers, and poets, 
who inspired men to a better faith in themselves and to less re- 
liance for happiness or success upon outward things. 

See also Alcott, Louisa. Page 16 

EWING, JULIANA HORATIA (English, 1841-1885) 

Mrs. Ewing was an English writer of simple, unaffected chil- 
dren’s stories which have great charm and interest. 

Important Works: Jackanapes Lob-lie-by-the-fire Jan of the Windmill 

93 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

FABRE, JEAN HENRI* (French, 1823-1915) 

JERE goes little Henri, barefooted, bare- 
headed, with his soiled frieze smock flapping 
against his heels. He is coming home from the 
tiny hamlet of Malaval where he has been living 
with his grandam and his grandad, horny-handed 
folk who till the soil. A solitary place it was, 
the cottage at Malaval, standing so lone amidst 
the broom and heather, with no neighbor for 
miles around. Sometimes thieving wolves came 
sneaking by, and the country round about was 
a wild solitude, mossy fens and quagmires oozing with iridescent 
pools. But the house itself was a cozy place, its barnyard swarm- 
ing with lambs and geese and pigs, its big room glowing with 
lurid light from the fire which brings into bright relief the eager 
faces of children, crowding around the table. Each child has 
a spoon and a wooden bowl before him, and there at one end of 
the table, his unclipped hair like a shaggy mane, sits Grandad, 
cutting with vigorous stroke an enormous rye loaf the size of a cart- 
wheel. Armed with a long metal ladle, Grandma is dipping the 
supper from a capacious pot that bubbles lustily over the flames. 
Um! how good it smells, the savor of bacon and turnips! After 
supper, Grandma takes up her distaff and spindle in the corner by 
the hearth and tells the children stories as they squat in the fire- 
light before her, stories of dragons and serpents and wolves. 

Little Henri loves those stories, but he loves something else 
better still, for which the others laugh at him. He finds a whole 
fairy world for himself by watching the queer insects that abound in 
that countryside. Little six-year-old monkey! He will stand in 
ecstasy before the splendor of the gardener beetle’s wing-cases, or 
the wings of a butterfly. All the dazzling beauty of their shimmer- 
ing color is as magic unto him. Once he heard a little singing, faint 
and soft among the bushes at night-fall. What was it? A little 

*Told chiefly from the autobiographical chapters in The Life of the Fly. 



94 



THE LATCH KEY 

bird? He must discover. True, he dares not venture too far away. 
There are wolves about, you know. Just there it is, the sound, 
behind that clump of broom. The boy puts out his hand. In vain ! 
At the faintest little noise the brushwood jingle ceases. At last! 
Whoosh ! A grab of the hand and he holds the singer fast. It is 
not a bird; it is a kind of grasshopper, and the boy knows now from 
his own observation that the grasshopper sings. 

Ah, well-a-day! Now he is going back to the town of St. Leons 
in southern France where he was bom. His father has sent for 
him to go to school. The schoolmaster of St. Leons is Henri’s god- 
father, and what a man he is! He is not only schoolmaster; he is 
village barber as well and shaves all the notables, the mayor and 
parish priest. He is the bell-ringer who must interrupt his lessons 
to ring a merry peal for a wedding or a christening. He is choir- 
master and fills the church with his mighty voice at vespers. He is 
care-taker of the village clock and climbs every day to the top of 
the steeple where he opens a huge cage of rafters and performs 
some miraculous windings amidst a maze of wheels and springs. 
He is manager of the property of an absentee landlord, directs the 
getting in of the hay, the walnuts, the apples and oats; he takes 
care of an old vacant castle with four great towers which are now 



95 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

but so many houses for pigeons. Such time as he has left from 
these duties he gives to his teaching! And the room where little 
Henri goes to school! It is at once a school, a kitchen, a bedroom, 
a dining room, a chicken house and a piggery! There is a ladder 
leading up out of it to the loft above, whence the schoolmaster 
sometimes brings down hay for his ass, or a basket of potatoes for 
the house-wife. That loft is the only other room in the house. The 
school room has a monumental fire-place, adorned with enormous 
bellows and a shovel so huge that it takes two hands to lift it. 
On either side of the hearth are recesses in the wall. These recesses 
are beds, and each has two sliding planks that serve as doors and 
shut in the sleeper at night, so he may lie cozy and snug while the 
North- wind howls without. Over in the sunny nook by the window 
stands the master's desk, and opposite, in a wall-niche, gleam a 
copper water-pail and rows of shining pewter dishes. Well nigh 
every spot on the wall that is touched by the light is adorned with a 
gay-colored half-penny picture. There is the lovely Genevieve of 
Brabant with her roe, and the fierce villain, Golo, hiding, sword 
in hand, darkly in the bushes. There is the Wandering Jew with 
hobnailed boots and a stout stick, his long, white beard falling, 
like an avalanche of snow, over his apron to his knees. What a 
source of constant delight to Henri are these pictures! How they 
hold his eye with their color — great patches of red, blue and green! 

On three-legged stools before the hearth sit the little scholars, 
and there before them, in an enormous cauldron over the flames, 
hangs the pigs' food, simmering and giving off jets of steam with 
a puff-puff-puffing sound. Sometimes the boys take care to leave 
the school room door open. Then the little porkers, attracted by 
the smell of the food, come running in. They go trotting up to 
Henri, grunting and curling their little tails, questioning with 
their sharp little eyes, and poking their cold, pink snouts into his 
hand in search of a chestnut or scrap of bread. The master flicks 
his handkerchief — snick ! Off go the little pigs ! All to no use ! A 

96 


THE LATCH KEY 

moment later, behold, in the doorway, old Madame Hen with 
her velvet-coated brood! The boys crumble pieces of bread and 
vie with each other to call the little chicks to them. Ah! their 
backs are so downy and soft to tickle with your fingers! 

It was not much little Henri could learn in such a school. No! 
he held a book up in front of his face but he never even learned his 
letters! One day his father brings him home a gaily-colored print, 
divided into squares, in each of which an animal teaches the alpha- 
bet by means of his name. A is for Ass, and so on! Little Henri 
is overjoyed. Those speaking pictures bring him among his friends. 
Animals forever ! The beasts have taught him his letters ! 

But now where shall he keep his precious print? He has a 
little sanctum that he has appropriated to himself in their humble 
home. It is a window in a cozy recess like the schoolmaster’s. 
From there he can overlook the whole village as it straggles along 
the hillside. Way down in the hollow is the church with its three 
steeples and its clock. A little higher up lies the village square 
where a fountain falls from basin to basin beneath a high-arched 
roof. Sprinkled over the slopes above, lie little houses with garden 
patches rising in terraces banked up by tottering walls. Between, 
are steep lanes cut out of the solid rock, lanes so steep that even 
the sure-footed mules, with their loads of branches, hesitate to enter 
them. High above all, standing out against the sky, a few wind- 
battered oaks bristle on the ridges. Those trees are Henri’s friends 
and he loves them dearly. In stormy weather they bow their 
heads and turn their backs to the wind. They 
bend and toss about as though to uproot them- 
selves and take to flight. How often has Henri 
watched them writhing like madmen when the 
North-wind’s besom raises the snow-dust; and 
then tomorrow they stand motionless, still and 
upright, against a fair blue sky. What are they 
doing up there, those desolate trees? He is 

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MY BOOK HOUSE 

gladdened by their calmness and distressed by their terrified ges- 
tures. They are his friends. In the morning the sun rises behind 
their transparent screen and ascends in its glory. Where does it 
come from? To the boy, those trees seem the boundary of the 
world. In this cozy little sanctum, with such an outlook, Henri 
keeps all his treasures. It is not too many treasures that he is 
allowed to keep. 

Once he was sent up the hillside by the path that climbed be- 
hind the chateau to the pond. He was to lead their twenty-four 
downy ducklings to the water. What a delight that pond was to 
him. On the warm mud of its edge the Frog’s baby, the little 
Tadpole, basks and frisks in its black legions. At the bottom are 
beautiful shells and little worms carrying tufts and feathers. Above, 
the reeds and water are swarming with busy life. It is a whole 
immense world for Henri to observe. What are all those little 
creatures about? What are they doing? What are their names? 
While the ducklings rummage delightedly, head-downward and 
stem-upward in the water, Henri looks carefully about. There 
are some soot-colored knots like strands of old yam in the mud. He 
lifts one up. It slips sticky and slack through his fingers, but look! 
a few of the knots have burst, and out comes a black globule the 
size of a pinhead, followed by a flat tail. He recognizes, on a small 
scale, the Frog’s baby, the Tadpole, and has found out that these 
are her eggs. Enough ! he disturbs the knots of yarn no more. 

When he goes home that night his pockets are bulging with 
treasures. He has found stones that glitter like diamonds, and 
something like gold dust amidst the sand. On the alder trees he 
has found that beautiful beetle, the sacred scarab. It is of 
an unutterable blue, a living jewel that pales the azure of the 
sky. He puts the glorious one in an empty snail shell which he 
plugs up with a leaf. He will take it home to observe it at leisure. 
But when he reaches the cottage and mother and father see his 
pockets like to be tom to pieces by their burden his father cries: 

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THE LATCH KEY 

“You rascal! I send you to mind the ducks and you amuse 
yourself by picking up stones. Make haste, throw them away!” 

Broken-hearted, he obeys. Diamonds, gold-dust, petrified 
ram’s-hom, heavenly beetle, all are flung on the ash-heap! 

The brook that runs through the village is also a source of 
constant delight to Henri,— dear little brook, so tranquil, cool 
and clear. Half-way up the hillside a miller has dammed it to 
make a reservoir for his mill-wheel. The reservoir is shut off 
from the road by a melancholy wall, all darkly bearded with ferns, 
but one day little Henri hoists himself up on a playfellow’s shoul- 
ders and peers over. Bottomless, stagnant water he sees, cov- 
ered with slimy, green scum, and in the gaps of that carpet, there 
lazily swims a black and yellow reptile! Ha! the very serpent 
or dragon of his grandmother’s fireside tales it seems. Henri 
loses no time. He slips down again in a hurry. Years later 
he knows he had seen a salamander. 

Below the reservoir, alders and ash bend forward on either 
side of the brook, a lofty arch of living green. At the foot of 
the trees the great twisted roots form watery caverns prolonged 
into gloomy corridors. On the threshold of these fastnesses 
shimmers only a glint of sunshine that sifts down through the 
leaves overhead. This is the haunt of the red-necktied minnow. 
Come along very gently. Lie flat on the ground and look. What 
pretty little fish they are with their scarlet throats. See them there 
clustering side by side and rinsing their mouths incessantly. No 
movement save the slightest quiver of their tails and the fin on their 
backs to keep them still in running water. On a sudden a leaf 
drops down from the tree. Whoosh! the whole troop disappears! 

On the other side of the brook is a cluster of beeches with 
smooth straight trunks like pillars. In the shade of those majes- 
tic branches sit chattering crows. The ground below is padded 
with moss, and at Henri’s first step on that downy carpet his eye 
is caught by what?— it must be an egg dropped there by some 


99 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

vagrant hen. No! It is that curious thing, 
a mushroom, not yet full spread. It is the 
first he has ever picked and he turns it about 
in his fingers inquiring into its structure. 
Soon he finds another differing in size and 
shape and color. Ah! what a great treat it 
is! This one is bell-shaped, that one is like 
a cup; others are drawn out into spindles, 
hollowed into funnels or rounded like hemi- 
spheres. He comes upon one that is broken 
and weeping milky tears. He steps upon 
another and it all turns blue in an instant. 
Ah! but here is one shaped like a pear with a little hole at the top 
like a sort of chimney. He prods the under side with his fingers. 
A whiff of smoke shoots up from the chimney ! Amusing ! How amus- 
ing! Henri has found a puff ball. 

Plants and insects and animals, — on every side, what things, 
of interest in the world. Among the golden buttercups of the 
meadows, the blue campanulas of the hills, the pink heather of 
the mountains, the fragrant bracken of the woods, what treasures 
Henri finds! And the birds! Once he was climbing the hill with 
an apple for his lunch, to visit his friends, the trees, and explore 
the edge of the world. But what is this at his feet? A lovely 
bird has flown from its hiding place under the eaves of a stone. 
Bless us! here is a nest made of hair and fine straw, and in it six 
eggs laid so prettily side by side. Those eggs are a magnificent 
blue, as though steeped in the blue of the sky. Overpowered with 
happiness, Henri lies down on the grass and stares, while the 
mother, with a little clap of her gullet — Tack! Tack! flits anxiously 
near by. It is- the first nest which Henri has ever found, the 
first of the joys which the birds are to bring him. 

But when Henri is twelve years old his father moves away 
from the country and goes to the town to keep a cafe. Now 



IOO 


THE LATCH KEY 


Henri may go to school where he can really learn. His father, 
however, is never truly successful. He is always poor. Bad days 
come again when Henri must leave his lessons and earn his bread 
as best he may, now selling lemons under the arcades of the market 
at the fair of Beaucaire, or before the barracks of the Pre, another 
day enlisting in a gang of day-laborers to work on the road. Gloomy 
days those were, lonely and despairing, but in spite of all, the 
boy’s love of nature and his passion for learning upheld him. 
Often, too, some creature kept him company, some insect never 
seen before. Today he is hungry, but he finds for the first time 
the pine-chafer, that superb beetle whose black or chestnut coat 
is sprinkled with specks of white velvet, and which squeaks when 
you capture him, with a slight complaining sound. Enough! 
Henri’s hunger is forgotten. 

When he is nineteen, Henri takes a competitive examination 
and enters the normal school of Carpentras. He finishes the 
very simple schooling there, and then, little as he knows, he begins 
to teach others. What a teacher he is, studying right along with 
his pupils and learning through teaching them, puzzling out for 
himself, with passionate devotion, every branch of science, and 
teaching as he goes. Now he holds his chem- 
istry class with rudest, home-made instru- 
ments, in the dusky, vaulted nave of an old, 
abandoned, Gothic church, which has once 
seemed to him like some wizard’s den, with 
its rusty, old weather-cock creaking atop its 
steeple, the great bats flitting among the 
gargoyles and the owls hooting on the roof. 

Now he takes his pupils out among the fields 
to study nature “at the ineffable festival of 
the awakening of life in the Spring.” 

His pupils love him dearly, but alas! edu- 
cation is still held in little esteem in France. 



IOI 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

The salary paid Professor Fabre is but a paltry pittance. He is 
married, too, and has a family to keep. How can he make both 
ends meet? Only by teaching, teaching, teaching, and that leaves 
him so little time to study his precious insects. He is peculiar, too, 
is Professor Fabre, and finds little favor with his fellow teachers. 
In the simplicity of his heart he cares nothing for worldly honors, 
for the forms and ceremonies of the world. He cares only to study 
and to learn. He does not like to wear the long, slick, black coat 
and high silk hat befitting a Professor. Fie ! There goes Professor 
Fabre in a little slouch hat! It is unseemly! He must be repri- 
manded! He must wear a “topper” like his fellows! And so it 
goes. For thirty years of patient struggle, so it goes. But now, 
at last, he has acquired a modest income from his writings. He 
can leave off teaching and buy a little house at Serignan. Glory 
be! he can doff his professor’s coat and don the peasant’s blouse 
again! He can plant a flower in his old silk hat, and when it has 
served its time as a flowerpot he can kick it into bits! He is free 
for his studies! 

A pink house with green shutters, half hidden among trees, 
was the hermitage at Serignan, and its garden a riot of verdure, 
the sweet air full of insects humming and heavy with perfume. 
Here those little creatures each told the student its secret and 
its history. How he loved them all, how tenderly he wrote of 
them, how accurately he observed them. Other scientists dis- 
sected insects and sought the secret of their life from death; Fabre 
observed his alive and sought the secret of their life from the 
marvelous instinct that directed all their ways. With reverence 
and awe he stood before the unerring Power that guides the wild 
bee and the wasp, though they may be carried miles away from 
home, back over vast and unknown spaces, surely to their nests. 
In instinct he saw the lofty evidence of God. How wonderfully 
those little creatures built their nests, how certain was the power 
that guided them, how surely each fulfilled his given task. True, 


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the ugliness he saw in that little world troubled his tender spirit, — 
the cannibalism, the brutality of manners, the murders and assas- 
sinations. Here was something to wish done away. But far 
above all else, he marveled at the wonderful intelligence that 
directed there, and throughout nature he adored the great Eter- 
nal Power whose imprint is everywhere. 

Studying in his sunny garden, Fabre not only loved insects 
himself, but he also taught others to love them. He was the first 
to cast away in his writings the long words and dry scientific phrases 
which other scientists used and which seemed to him like some 
barbarous Iroquois tongue. He wrote as the poet writes. For 
him the cricket was not some creature with a long Latin name, 
but “the brown violinist of the clods,” and that voracious diving 
beetle that feeds on all the other insects of the water, was not the 
Dytiscus only, but the “pirate of the ponds.” He tells us how 
at break of day “the bee pops her head out of her attic window 
to see what the weather is” and how “the timid spider of the 
thickets suspends by ethereal cables the branching whorls of his 
snare which the tears of the night have turned into chaplets of 
jewels.” What fairy tale could equal to him the wonder of the 
butterfly bursting from the cocoon, or the marvelous unfolding 
of the locust’s iridescent wings? He had his flesh-eating ogres 
too, his pirates and assassins, his modest and industrious little 
workers with their thousand curious callings, and his pigmy 
princes clad in gold and purple, dazzling with embroidery, adorned 
with lofty plumes, displaying their diamonds, their topazes and 
sapphires, gleaming with fire or shining like mirrors, magni- 
ficant of mien. To him, the best fairy book ever written could 
be read by simply upturning a stone. And so little Henri dis- 
covered the Fairyland of Science and revealed it to the world. 

Important Works: The Story Book of Science Life of the Spider Life of the Fly 

FAULKNER, GEORGENE (American contemporary, 1873- ) 

“The Story Lady” is one of Chicago’s favorite story tellers. 
Dressed in costume, she often tells stories of foreign lands. 

Important Works: Italian Story Book Old Russian Tales 
103 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

FIELD, EUGENE (American, 1850-1895) 

HE “feller” who knew so much about “Seem’ Things 
at Night” and all his life long had the heart of a boy, 
was bom in St. Louis, but his mother died when he 
was seven years old and he was brought up by a 
cousin in Amherst, Massachusetts. His grandmother 
had high hopes of turning him out a minister and 
used to offer him ninepence to write her a sermon. O, what 
ridiculous sermons he wrote! But the boy, who always had a 
merry twinkle in his eye, did not grow up to be a preacher. He 
became a newspaper man and the beloved poet of childhood. 
For twelve years he worked on the Chicago Daily News but his 
heart was most at one with the children who played on the vacant 
lots near his home. And what a man he was for a joke! If he 
felt that an increase of salary was his due, could he go and ask 
for it in the ordinary way? No, not he! He must appear in the 
office of his Chief dressed in rags, with four of his children like- 
wise in rags. They all make pleading gestures, fall on their knees 
and pretend to weep, while he cries beseechingly, “Please, Mr. 
Stone, can't you see your way to raise my salary?” 

Tenderness, beauty, fun, love of fairies, witches and childhood, — 
all these he preserved in the midst of Chicago’s work-a-day world. 

Important Works: Poems of Childhood. Lullaby Land. With Trumpet and Drum. 

FRANCE, ANATOLE (Anatole Thibaut) French, 1844- 

The light and air of Paris were the native atmosphere of little 
Anatole Thibaut. As a child he watched the dairy girls carrying 
milk and the coal-heavers, coal, into all the houses of the Latin 
Quarter. He lived among the riverside streets and quays of the 
Seine, where his father was a poor book-seller, and his dearest 
friends were the wise old books. How he loved the river, too, 
“which by day mirrored the sky and bore boats on its breast, by 
night decked itself with jewels and sparkling flowers.” He grew 
up the most French of Frenchmen and, when he began to write, 
he boldly took the name France in place of Thibaut. 

Important Works: Girls and Boys. Our Children ( Illustrated by Boutet de Monvel) 

104 




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FREEMAN, MARY E. WILKINS (American, 1862- ) 

A Massachusetts woman, who portrays the quaint, homely life 
of New England. For years the secretary to Oliver Wendell Holmes. 

Jerome , A Poor Man In Colonial Times Young Lucrelia 

GALSWORTHY, JOHN (English, 1867- ) 

N earnest, stick-to-it-ive boy was John Gals- 
worthy, not surprisingly brilliant, but sure and 
steady. He comes of an old Saxon family from Dev- 
onshire and was born at Combe in Surrey. At 
Harrow and Oxford he received the typical educa- 
tion of an English gentleman, after which he was off 
for several years of travel in foreign lands — to Russia, Canada, Aus- 
tralia, New Zealand, South Africa and the far-off Fiji Islands. On 
an old-fashioned sailing ship off Australia he met the novelist, 
Joseph Conrad, then still a sailor, and the two became fast friends. 

When Galsworthy returned to England he began to write, — 
novels, poems, plays. Strife, a gripping play presenting the strife 
between Capital and Labor, first really showed that he could so 
influence men as to bring about reform. Justice, written to reveal 
the hideous suffering caused by the cold wheels of English law, as 
it ground over criminals like some mechanical thing with neither 
sympathy nor intelligence, so moved Secretary Churchill that he 
set about reforms which have changed the English prison system. 
GARLAND, HAMLIN (American, 1860- ) 

Hamlin Garland was a farm boy of the Middle West, bom in 
Wisconsin and educated in Iowa. Later he took up a claim in 
Dakota, but he soon made off to Boston and began writing stories. 

Boy Life on the Prairie The Long Trail {Klondike) 

GAUTIER, JUDITH (French, 1850- ) 

A French writer of plays, poems and historical novels, daughter 
of Theophile Gautier, the famous novelist, and wife of Pierre 
Loti, another noted writer. She is a student of Oriental life and 
language and knows both Chinese and Japanese well. 

The Memoirs of a White Elephant 

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•GOLDSMITH OLIVER (Irish, 1728-1774) 

OOR little Doctor Goldsmith, with his kindly eyes, 
his squat little figure, his awkward, ungainly legs, 
his pale, pock-marked face and that absurd love of 
fine clothes! .How everybody laughed at him, 
though sometimes with tears, and how they all loved 
him. Now, if his fortunes were poor, his coat was 
bought second hand, a tarnished green and gold with an ugly patch 
on the breast, but he strutted along just as proudly and carefully 
hid the patch by holding his hat well over it; now, when his fortunes 
were fine, he blossomed out in peach-color, claret, sky-blue! And 
yet, in spite of his vanity and a thousand other weaknesses, what 
a great, generous, loving heart! Who could do other than love him? 

He had always a crowd of children at his heels, had little Doc- 
tor Goldsmith. His favorite enjoyment was to romp with them, 
the merriest and noisiest of all. Sometimes he played them a tune 
on his flute, sang them an Irish song, or told them stories of Irish 
fairies. Again, he led them at blindman’s-buff, or a game of hunt-the- 
slipper. And if the children were very small, he would turn the 
hind part of his wig before and play scores of tricks to amuse them. 

Once he was drinking coffee with a friend and took the friend’s 
little five-year old son up tenderly on his knee. Moved by some 
perverse instinct, what did the tiny George Coleman do, but rap 
him a spiteful slap on the face that left a tingling red mark. The 
father indignantly took his small son and locked him up in another 
room to suffer for his crime by solitary imprisonment in the dark. 
But soon, very soon, there was some one come to the little fellow’s 
rescue, some one holding a candle and smiling so tenderly. It 
was Dr. Goldsmith himself. Georgie sulked and sobbed at first, 
but Goldsmith fondled and soothed him until he began to brighten. 
Then the little Doctor placed three hats on the carpet with a shilling 
undereach. “Hey, presto, cockolorum!” he cried. And lo! when 
he lifted the hats, all three of the shillings were found in a heap 

*Read The Jessamy Bride by F. F. Moore, a story of Goldsmith and his time. 

106 



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under one! Such wizardry! George Coleman’s heart was won! 

It was way back in the lonely little hamlet of Pallas, in Ire- 
land, that Oliver Goldsmith was bom, in a little old house that 
the peasant folk said stood on haunted ground, where “the good 
folk,” the fairies, held their nightly revels. But when little Noll 
was still very young, his father moved to a better home on the 
outskirts of Lissoy. This home was part parsonage and part 
farm for Father Goldsmith was a country curate, large of heart and 
small of means, and as guileless and ignorant of the world as the 
dear old Vicar of Wakefield. Lissoy was a charming village, too, 
very like “Sweet Auburn, loveliest village of the plain,” with its 
sheltered little white cottages and cultivated farms. 

At the age of six little Noll was sent to the village school- 
master, Thomas Byme, and what a man he was! He had served 
in the Spanish wars, and now, when he should have been teaching 
the village urchins their sums, he held them spellbound with tales 
of his vagabond wanderings abroad, adventures of which he, him- 
self, was usually the hero. To this he added tales of fairies, ghosts 
and banshees, pirates, robbers, smugglers. So, little Noll imbibed 
in his youth far more of romance than of learning. When he grew 
older he was sent to a higher school at Edgeworthstown, some 
twenty miles from Lissoy, and on his last journey home from there, 
a mere stripling of sixteen, he met with a most absurd adventure. 

Little used to money was Oliver Goldsmith, and now a friend 
had given him a whole round golden guinea to cover his traveling 
expenses. Noll’s head was quite turned by his riches! Off he 
started on horseback over a road so rough as to be impassable to 
coaches, determined to play the man and spend his treasure in 
lavish fashion. For the night he halted at Ardagh, and, intending 
to ask the whereabouts of the inn, he accosted the very first per- 
son he met, demanding with swaggering importance to know 
where was “the best house in the village.” Now it chanced that 
the man whom he thus encountered was a famous wag and. 


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amused by the stripling’s importance, he 
directed him literally to “the best house in 
the village,” the family mansion of one, Mr. 
Featherstone, a gentleman of great for- 
tune. With all the airs in the world, up 
rides young Noll to the house which he 
thinks is an inn and orders his horse to be 
led away to the stable! He then walks 
into the parlor, seats himself by the fire 
and curtly demands to know what he 
can have for supper! The owner of the 
place, seeing the lad’s whimsical mistake, and learning, by chance, 
that he was the son of an old friend, determined to carry out 
the joke. So young Goldsmith was fooled to the top of his bent 
and permitted to have full sway all the evening. Usually Noll 
was shy and diffident of manner, but thinking himself now among 
inferiors, he grew very free and easy, showing off and making 
out that he was a most experienced traveller. When supper 
was served he condescendingly insisted that the landlord, his wife 
and daughter should sit at the table and partake of the meal with 
him, and when he went to bed, as a last flourish of manliness, he 
gave special orders that a hot cake should be ready for his break- 
fast. Imagine his dismay next day when he learned he had swag- 
gered thus in the house of a private gentleman! Years later he 
turned this ludicrous blunder into the play “ She Stoops to Conquer 
or The Mistakes of a Night,” which set all London laughing. 

But Goldsmith’s school life, henceforth, was far from happy. 
He was ugly, awkward and poor, and, moreover, little given to 
learning. In Trinity College, Dublin, he had to earn his way 
by holding the position of a servant, and tutors and boys seemed 
in league together to jeer at and torment him. He was extremely 
sensitive, too, because, of his ugliness and he added to his misery 
by seeking riotous friends instead of trying to shine as a student. 

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Time and again he failed, failed, failed. He was to enter the min- 
istry, but he appeared before the Bishop to seek his appointment 
in such loud scarlet breeches that the Bishop was scandalized and 
refused him. He failed at the law; he failed as a student of medicine. 
So at last he took his flute and off he went alone for a walking 
tour through Flanders, France and Switzerland. As he journeyed 
he played on his flute and his tunes set the peasantry dancing and 
won for him everywhere his supper and a bed. 

After wandering through Italy, likewise, he returned to Eng- 
land with no friends and no calling. At length he took a garret in 
a dark, miserable, little back court that could only be reached by 
a steep flight of narrow flagstone stairs called Breakneck Steps. 
Here washings hung out all day and frowsy women quarreled over 
the washtubs, but for the first time in his life Goldsmith set 
earnestly to work. He began to write, to drudge at writing, 
doing whatever the booksellers ordered. Now these were the days 
when hustling little John Newbery kept his far-famed shop in 
St. Paul’s Churchyard, where 
the first real children’s books 
were displayed, bound in gilt 
paper and adorned with queer, 
old, hideous wood-cuts. Gold- 
smith did a great deal of work 
for Newbery, probably editing 
the first real Mother Goose and 
writing the tale of Goody Two 
Shoes. 

But even in such dark days 
Goldsmith was never bitter. 

He was always inviting his 
landlady or some poor child 
into his rooms to cheer them 
with a cake or sweetmeat and 



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to play for them on his flute. Moreover, all his life long he believed 
with childlike simplicity anything that was told him, and many a 
tale of woe, either true or untrue, wrung from him his last penny. 
Sometimes, too, with that curious unworldliness that kept him from 
ever truly understanding money, he gave away things he did not 
possess. Once his landlady came to him with a sorry tale of her 
husband cast into the debtor’s prison for desperate need of money. 
Moved to the heart, Goldsmith sold a new suit of clothes which 
he had not paid for in order to give her the money. He was then 
called a knave and a sharper by those who had sold him the 
suit, and nearly went to the debtor’s prison himself trying to pay 
for what he no longer possessed. 

Slowly, slowly, however, his writings began to be noticed. Ah! 
Now he commenced to make worthy friends. At length the great 
Dr. Samuel Johnson himself, the most famous literary light of 
the day, became his friend. In 1764 he was one of a group of most 
remarkable men who formed a club that met regularly, hence- 
forth, at the Turk’s Head Tavern. There was the big, burly, 
important Doctor Johnson, always followed by his humble little 
satellite, James Boswell, whom he was continually snubbing and 
who delighted in being snubbed by the great Dr. Johnson. There 
was Edmund Burke, the brilliant Irish orator, to be known in 
the days of the American Revolution for his eloquent speech in 
Parliament on Conciliation With the Colonies, and there was the 
famous portrait painter, Sir Joshua Reynolds. The actor, David 
Garrick, was likewise a friend of the group. All these great men 
loved “Goldy,” though they often made merciless fun of him. 

One day word came to Dr. Johnson that Goldsmith was in 
great distress and besought him to come to his lodgings at once. 
Off went Dr. Johnson to find that the landlady at the place where 
Goldsmith now lived had had him arrested for not paying his rent 
and a sheriff’s officer had him in custody. Goldsmith told John- 
son, however, that he had the manuscript of a novel ready for 


no 


THE LATCH KEY 

print, but could not go out to sell it because of the officer. John- 
son glanced hastily over the manuscript, saw that it had merit, 
and went out and sold it for sixty pounds ($300). That manu- 
script was the famous story, The Vicar of Wakefield. 

Soon after this, Goldsmith’s poem, The Traveller, appeared, 
and it was at once pronounced so fine that his friends at the Turk’s 
Head could scarcely believe he had written it. Now, at last, Gold- 
smith began to prosper and to earn a great deal of money. But 
alas! funny little man that he was, he would still continue to make 
such ridiculous blunders. The Duke of Northumberland once 
sent for him to congratulate him on The Traveller. Dressed in 
his best, Goldsmith sallied forth to Northumberland House, pre- 
paring on the way a lot of studied compliments to recite to his 
noble patron. After he had waited some time in Northumberland 
House a very grand personage appeared, most elegantly dressed. 
Taking him for the Duke, “Goldy” delivered unto him all the fine 
compliments he had prepared. To his great astonishment the 
man informed him that he was only a servant, and his master 
would presently appear! As the Duke came in just then, he found 
Goldsmith so confused that, far from repeating his compliments, 
he could scarcely stutter a word. 

During his latter days Goldsmith became famous and had such 
delightful friends as the Homecks, a widow and two lovely daugh- 
ters, one of whom, Miss Mary, he called affectionately, the Jes- 
samy bride. But in spite of his fame, he never learned how to 
manage money, and throughout his life he remained the same 
simple, kind-hearted gentleman whose friends, though they smiled 
at his blunders, always loved him so dearly. 

Vicar of Wakefield She Stoops to Conquer The Deserted Village The Traveller 

GRAHAME, KENNETH (Scottish, 1858- ) 

A Scottish author, educated in England. Best known for his 
Golden Age and Dream Days, stories reminiscent of childhood, and 
for The Wind in the Willows, a charming nature fantasy. 


Ill 


MY BOOK HOUSE 



GREENAWAY, KATE (English, 1846-1901) 

OSES and posies and quaint little children in 
old-fashioned gardens, — what magic in Kate 
> Greenaway’s name! Her lovely pictures of 
children, so dainty and full of grace, seem to 
breathe forth the very fragrance of prim little, trim little gardens. 

A happy little mite was the tiny Kate Greenaway, a London 
child sent into the country to be nursed by an old family servant. 
Sometimes she ventured out with her “Nanan” into the grain 
fields where the wheat towered high above her head. What en- 
chanted vistas opened before her, stretching away forever and 
ever, — avenues of golden grain made brilliant with scarlet pim- 
pernels, blue and white veronica and gorgeous crimson poppies. 
But oh! When she could visit her far-off Flowerbank it was more 
exciting still. There were queer old stiles to be climbed and de- 

1 1 2 


THE LATCH KEY 

lightfully terrifying foot-planks to be crossed over such a deep, 
dark, mysterious stream. Then, away through a shady wood to 
the mill. In the woods grew the large, blue cranesbill, the purple 
vetch and wild morning-glory, and up in the trees the wood- 
pigeons cooed. Around the mill wound a little river with for- 
get-me-nots on its banks and apple-trees trailing their heavy 
branches almost into the stream. 

After a year or two in the country Kate was sent back to Lon- 
don. Her father was a wood-engraver but he had not succeeded 
in business, so Mrs. Greenaway set up a shop to sell laces, chil- 
dren’s dresses and fancy goods. Kate was sent now to an infants’ 
school kept by a little old lady who wore a large, frilly cap, a 
frilly muslin dress, a scarf over her shoulders and a long apron. 
What a happy child she was, happier than either her brother or 
sisters, though they had the same surroundings. Her rich fancy 
found beauty everywhere. 

The Greenaway children were allowed to roam about freely 
in the neighborhood of their home. They had given their prom- 
ise to go no farther than a certain exciting corner and they always 
kept their word. But what streets those were through which 
they roamed! Where else were to be seen such grand, mysterious 
children guarded by their nurses, such rustling, perfumed ladies 
and such fascinating shop windows? And on that street corner, 
what adventures! Now a sailor man with a wooden leg appealed 
to the sympathy of passers by displaying a large, lurid picture of 
a ship overturned by a whale! Now, hark! a drum and the sound 
of a weird little shriek! A Punch and Judy show! Off the small 
Greenaways scamper to crowd around Mr. Punch. But alas! 
when their interest in the performance was at a white heat, just 
when the ghost was about to nab Mr. Punch, all too suddenly 
the manager would stop and declare he would not proceed a bit 
further unless he was paid with some pennies! Now the little 
Greenaways never had any pennies, and as the other small on- 

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lookers were frequently in the same plight, off would go Mr. Punch 
to more profitable fields, leaving black despair behind. But then, 
no use for long grieving! Punch was soon replaced by those fas- 
cinating mechanical puppets, the Fantoccini, — Mother Goose 
with her milk-pails from which jumped little children, the skelet- 
ton that came to bits and joined itself together again, and four 
little figures dancing a quadrille. Rarely was the comer unoc- 
cupied. There was always the chance of tumblers, tight-rope 
dancers, and that delightful street-organ, on top of which the 
ingeniously contrived figure of an executioner cut off the head of 
a queen about once every minute to the tune of the Marsellaise ! 

While Kate lived in London, her bedroom window looked out 
over naught more beautiful than red roofs and chimney pots 
but she used to imagine that steps led up from those roofs to a 
lovely garden where nasturtiums and flowers were blooming so 
near to the sky. She used to fancy, too, that a secret door had 
opened for her in the queer old houses that joined their own, and 
that that door led through lines of interesting old rooms, all so 
curious and delightful, and ending at last in a garden. By and 
by she began to want to express all this in painting, her love of 
children and of gardens, and so she set to work and studied to 
be a painter. 

First, she painted designs for valentines and Christmas cards, 
then she illustrated books, and at last she wrote Under the Window, 
her very own book of rhymes, and drew its beautiful illustrations. 
Soon Kate Greenaway’s fame spread around the world. The 
quaint little frocks and aprons, hats and breeches of her children, 
so funnily prim and neat, and yet so simple and graceful, set the 
style in dress for two continents. Dear, bright, quiet, little lady 
living in such seclusion! She showed people more of the charm of 
children’s ways than they had ever dreamed of, — their graces, 
their thousand little prettinesses, and she left a pure love of child- 
hood in many a heart that had never felt it before. 

Marigold Garden Under the Window Mother Goose 

1 14 


THE LATCH KEY 

GRIFFIS, WILLIAM ELLIOT (American, 1843- ) 

Dr. Griffis is a veteran of the Civil War and a great traveller who 
has made ten trips to Europe. In 1870, by invitation of the bar- 
on or damio of a province in Japan, he set out to organize schools 
there on American principles. He crossed America just after the 
completion of the trans-continental railway, when wild Indians on 
ponies, and soldiers at frontier forts still characterized the West. 
After twenty nine days on the Pacific on a sidewheel steamer, 
he spent seven weeks in Yedo and then went into the interior, 
the first American ever to have lived in a damio’s capitol. On 
his return to Yedo, he crossed the country in mid-winter, often 
on snow-shoes, over the mountains, where wolves and wild boar 
roamed. After four years in Japan he returned to this country 
and became a minister. He has written Japanese, Korean, Dutch 
Belgian, Swiss and Welsh fairy tales. 

GRIMM, WILHELM (1786-1859) and JACOB (1785-1863) 
The first and most important collectors of German folk tales. 
HALL, SARAH JOSEPHA (American, 1788-1879) 

HARRIS, JOEL CHANDLER (American, 1848-1908) 

LITTLE, red-haired, freckle-faced midget of a boy 
dashing down the main street of a sleepy Georgia 
town behind a team of powerful horses and hand- 
ling the reins with all the confidence of a six-foot 
hostler! Joel Chandler Harris, you mischievous 
little monkey! Come down off that box at once! 
Your mother is horrified. 

It was well for Joel that he did not distress that 
good mother of his too often, for all her hopes were centered on 
him. Long years ago the boy’s father had deserted the two and 
his mother had shouldered with splendid courage the burden of 
their support. She took in sewing and the two lived in a tiny 
cottage behind the great house of a friend. 

Eatonton was a typical little Southern town of the days before 

II 5 



K HOUSE 

the Civil War. It had a court- 
house and a town square, a tav- 
ern and several wide streets 
shaded by rows of fine old trees. 
On either side of the road, behind 
the trim boxwood hedges, rose 
stately colonial houses, the white 
pillars of their piazzas glinting 
here and there through the screen of odorous cedars, brightly 
blossoming myrtles and oleanders around them. 

A fun-loving, rough-and-tumble lad on the surface was Joel, 
playing all sorts of pranks with his friends and rolling in the white 
mud gullies or munching ginger-cakes with the little negro chil- 
dren. But he was a tender-hearted boy at bottom and never 
forgot a kindness. See him now behind the old school house, 
showing a wren’s nest to three little girls with such delight in the 
tiny, fragile thing. And how gentle and tender and kind the little 
girls are to the lad. A simple thing, but he never forgot it, never! 

Now, at last, came the time when Joel must be up and doing! 
One day he found these words in a newspaper, “Boy Wanted to 
Learn the Printer’s Trade.” Here was his opportunity. He was 
only fourteen years old but he put away his tops and marbles, 
packed up his little belongings in an old-fashioned trunk, kissed 
his mother good-bye and was off. He went to work for Mr. Joseph 
Addison Turner of Turnwold, a fine old plantation, with cotton- 
fields white as snow in the season, and a group of negro cabins 
hid in a grove of oak trees behind the house. Mr. Turner pub- 
lished a paper called The Countryman and the little printing 
office where the boy worked was a primitive place, on the roof of 
which the squirrels scampered and the bluejays cracked their 
acorns. Not twenty steps from the office door a partridge had built 
her nest and was raising a brood of young, while more than once 
a red fox went loping stealthily by to the woods. 

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THE LATCH KEY 

It was hard to say whether Joel enjoyed most the out-of-door 
life on the plantation, tramping about with a boy just his age who 
knew every path in the countryside, or browsing in Mr. Turner’s 
fine library, for he dearly loved to read. But when the work and 
play of the day were ended, and the glow of the light-wood knot could 
be seen in the negro cabins, Joel and the Turner children would 
steal away from the house and visit their friends in the slave 
quarters. Tucked away in the nook of a chimney corner, Joel 
listened with eager interest while Old Harbert and Uncle George 
Terrell, their black faces a-gleam in the firelight, told their pre- 
cious tales of Brer Rabbit and all the other lore of beasts and 
birds handed down from their African forefathers. And some- 
times, while the yellow yam baked in the ashes, or a hoe-cake 
browned on the shovel, the negroes would croon a camp-meeting 
hymn, or sing a corn-shucking melody. 

So passed months and years at Tumwold. And then the War! 
Joel Harris, a youth, with all the fire and passionate prejudices 
of boyhood, sitting up on a fence and watching the victorious 
Northern troops pass by, ploughing ankle-deep through the mud! 
The defeat of the South meant the end of The Countryman and 
the ruin of Mr. Turner. Joel had to start life anew. One paper 
after another gave him employment, and then, at last, he began 
to contribute to the Atlanta Constitution all those lively negro 
folk tales impressed so vividly on his mind in the old days at 
Tumwold — the stories of Uncle Remus. To Joel’s immense 
surprise, Uncle Remus made him famous. And so it happened 
that the little red-haired boy, now grown a man with a wife and 
children of his own, could offer his mother a real home, and as his 
fame grew with the passing years, he brought her increasing hap- 
piness and fulfilled all her early dreams. 

Uncle Remus , His Songs and Sayings Daddy Jake, the Runaway The Tar Baby 

HARRISON, ELIZABETH (American, contemporary) 

One of the founders of the National Kindergarten College. 

Important Works: In Story land 

ii 7 


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HAWTHORNE, NATHANIEL (American, 1804-1864) 

f [E solitary figure of a boy, alone on the top of 
a rocky cliff overlooking the sea at Salem. The 
surge beating up on the shore and the vast ocean 
stretching away forever, now grim and gray and 
angry, now flashing into light with the gleam of 
myriad jewels. HowNathaniel Hawthorne loved 
the sea! His father had been a sailor before he 
died and sailed far away — far, far away — to the 
Indies, to Africa and Brazil. Sometimes Nathaniel said to his 
mother that he, too, would go to sea and never, never return. A 
shy, solitary lad was Nathaniel, fond of his own fancies, fond of his 
own thoughts, fond of long, lonely rambles by the sea or through 
the queer little streets of Salem with their quaint old doorways 
and tragic memories of early witchcraft days. 

When Nathaniel was fourteen his mother moved to a little 
town in Maine on the fresh, bright waters of Sebago Lake. Here 
the lad began again his solitary walks, exchanging the narrow 
streets of Salem for the boundless, tangled wilderness of Maine. 
He roamed the woods by day with his gun and rod, and in the 
moonlight nights of winter, skated upon the lake till midnight, 
alone, always alone. When he found himself far from home and 
wearied with exercise, he often took refuge in some wood-cutter's 
cabin, where half a tree would be burning upon the hearth. 

But when Nathaniel grew up, he did not go to sea. He went 
to Bowdoin College, instead, where he met two young men who 
were destined to great distinction, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 
and Franklin Pierce. While he was here certain new desires 
must have sprouted in his heart, for he wrote home to his mother, 
“How would you like some day to see a whole shelf full of books 
written by your son, with ‘ Hawthorne's Works' printed on their 
backs?" And after graduating from Bowdoin, behold young 
Hawthorne sniffing no whiffs of old Ocean from behind the mast, 

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but returned to Salem and writing, writing, writing, living in 
such seclusion, too, that even his own fellow citizens in the town 
where he was bom scarcely knew him by sight! 

Little money, however, came from his magazine articles even 
when these were published in book form as Twice-told Tales, 
and all too soon, life unrolled another picture, — Nathaniel now a 
weigher in the Customs House at Boston, measuring coal, salt 
and other bulky commodities that came in on foreign vessels, 
irksome employment, but for two years faithfully performed. 
Thereafter, Nathaniel doing a farm hand’s chores at Brook Farm, 
striving with other earnest thinkers, to work out a way for men 
to lead better and simpler lives. 

But in 1842 Hawthorne married and settled down in the hand- 
some Old Manse at Concord. A beautiful place it was — the garden, 
the woods behind, and the river, to which he often fled to escape 
from too many visitors; and all his rich life there called forth a book 
which he named with tender affection Mosses from an old Manse. 

In the years that followed Hawthorne moved about from 
place to place, but his powerful romance, The Scarlet Letter , settled 
once and for all the fact that he was a genius. In a little red 
wooden house at beautiful Lenox in the Berkshires he led an idyl- 
lic life of peace and joy, happy in the companionship of his wife 
and their three children. Their home stood in the midst of a 
broad valley that was like a great bowl flooded with golden sun- 
shine. In the center there was a lake and all around, an amphi- 
theatre of hills, about whose quiet peaks hung delicate purple 
mists like the softest of airy veils. Here Mr. Hawthorne would 
lie in the sunshine flecked with the shadows from a tree, and his 
little Una, Rose and Julian would climb over him and cover his 
chin and breast with long grass blades till he looked like Pan, 
the merry god of the woods, with a verdant woodland beard. 
He was constantly telling the children stories, too, and entered 
whole-heatedly into their play, for he was always far more at home 

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with them than with their elders whom he avoided. At Lenox 
he wrote his Wonder Book , so loved by generations of children 
and his weird old story of Salem, The House of the Seven Gables . 

In 1853 Hawthorne's college friend, now President Pierce, 
sent him to Liverpool as American Consul and for seven years he 
and his little family lived abroad. While visiting Rome and 
poking about into all its interesting old comers, or watching the 
moonlight silver the majestic Coliseum and the arches and fallen 
columns of the ancient Roman forum, he made a draft of a won- 
derful story of Rome to be known as The Marble Faun . When 
he returned once more to America, Hawthorne went to live at 
the house called The Wayside, in Concord, where he knew Louisa 
Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau and all the other 
interesting Concord people. In that lovely spot he spent the rest 
of his days. Beautiful things were the children's stories that 
such a lover of children left to the world, but his novels are made 
of sterner stuff. They reveal with terrific force the fact that no 
man can disobey the still, small voice in his inmost soul that tells 
him when he is doing wrong, without the intensest suffering. 
HEADLAND, ISAAC TAYLOR (American, 1859- ) 

Isaac Taylor Headland has been a missionary and professor at 
various universities in China, and a lecturer on Chinese art, life, and 
language in America. Once he heard a Chinese nurse repeating 
rhymes to a baby and determined to make a collection of Chinese 
nursery rhymes. A donkey driver who heard him repeating his 
precious rhyme, laughed and told him another one. Headland gave 
the man five cents and promised him as much more for each 
rhyme he could tell him. Soon he had nurses, drivers and chil- 
dren, all crowding to him to earn five cents by telling him nursery 
rhymes. Inside of a year he gathered six hundred, many of which 
are curious counterparts of our own Mother Goose. 

HEPBURN, THOMAS N. "Gabriel Setoun" (Scotch, 1861- ) 
HERFORD, OLIVER (English-American, contemporary) 

Important Works: Artful Anticks ( whimsical verses). 


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HOGG, JAMES, “The Ettrick Shepherd” (Scotch, 1770-1835) 
James Hogg was a Scotch shepherd who began to herd cows 
for a living when he was seven years old, and received for a half 
year’s wages one ewe lamb and a pair of shoes! From his mother 
and the other shepherds the boy heard the old border ballads and 
stories of fairies and giants, but at the age of twenty he still could 
not write all the alphabet. The remaining letters he studied out 
from a book in order that he might write down a few simple 
verses that he had been making. It chanced then that someone 
recited to him the poem of Tam O’Shanter and told him the story 
of Bums, the ploughman poet. That was sufficient to make the 
young shepherd resolve to be likewise a poet. One day while 
he was driving his sheep into Edinburgh he was seized with a 
sudden desire to see his verses in print. At once he sat down on 
a stone and scribbled them off on paper. Then he hurried on to 
a publisher and induced him to put them in print. These ballads 
attracted the attention of Sir Walter Scott, and through his 
kindness the Ettrick shepherd soon gained some renown. But 
though he now had a farm of his own, he still retained his simple, 
rough, peasant ways. Once he said to Scott, “ Ye can never sup- 
pose that I belong to your school o’ chivalry. Ye are the King 
o’ that school, but I’m King o’ the mountain and fairy school 
which is far higher than yours !” Indeed, his best poems are always 
of fairies. When he stepped outside that charmed fairy ring, his 
music and magic vanished. 

HOLLAND, JOSIAH GILBERT (American, 1819-1881) 

The founder of Scribner’s Monthly, now the Century Magazine. 
HOOD, THOMAS (English poet, 1799-1845) 

HOWELLS, WILLIAM DEAN (American, 1837-1920) 

For years the editor of The Atlantic Monthly and founder of 
that school of writers which portrays commonplace American life. 

Important Works: The Flight of Pony Baker. Christmas Every Day. 

INGELOW, JEAN (English, 1820-1897) 

Important Works: Mopsa, the Fairy. Stories Told to a Child 


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IRVING, WASHINGTON (American, 1783-1895) 

ONG, long ago, just at the close of the 
American Revolution, when New York was a 
little old town with all the air of an over- 
^1 grown village, a small boy was born there 
^ whose mother named him Washington Irving 
^ in honor of General Washington. When the 
little fellow was about six years old his nurse 
took him one day to see the procession escort- 
ing General Washington to Federal Hall to 
take his oath as first President of the United 
States. Pressing through the throng, the 
nurse dragged her small charge straight up to the great man and 
told him that the boy had been given his name. With a kindly 
smile Washington stopped to give his young namesake his blessing. 

Washington Irving grew to be an adventurous lad. He liked 
to visit new scenes and observe strange manners and customs. 
When he was still the merest slip of a child he made long tours of 
discovery into foreign parts, the foreign parts of his own little 
city, and more than once his parents had to employ the town- 
crier to hunt up their wandering son by crying his name through 
the town. He loved to roam around the Battery, and to wander 
out on the piers to watch the out-going ships departing to distant 
climes. With what longing eyes did he gaze after their lessening 
sails and waft himself in fancy to the very ends of the earth. As 
he grew into boyhood, Washington extended the range of his 
observations. He now spent his holiday afternoons in rambles 
far out into the country round about New York, visiting the little 
villages where the descendants of the old Dutch settlers continued 
to dwell, and pushing on, on to the very distant hills. He made 
voyages too, in a sail-boat up the lordly Hudson River whose 
cliffs and towering highlands breathed forth the very spirit of old 
Dutch and Indian legends. He penetrated into the heart of the 


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Catskill Mountains, that rise to the west of the river, changing 
their magical hues with every hour of the day. 

At times he peered into some dark glen, lonely and wild and 
tangled, or stood at the foot of a waterfall, a sliding sheet of silver, 
slipping down over mossy rocks, again he came out on the edge of 
a precipice, whence he could look out for miles and miles over all 
the sun-flooded valley and see far down below the twisting ribbon 
of the Hudson. He knew those mountains in sunshine and in 
storm — now in the calm of evening when they threw their long 
blue shadows so peacefully over the valleys, or gathered a hood 
of gray vapors about their heads to glow in the setting sun like a 
crown of glory — now when the thunderclouds lowered, the light- 
ning went leaping from crag to crag and peal after peal of thunder 
rolled crashing down their heights. And at the foot of these fairy 
mountains, its smoke curling up through the trees, would nestle 
a little Dutch village, where the houses had latticed windows and 
the gable fronts were surmounted by the quaintest of weathercocks. 
Here in the shade of some great tree before the old tavern, Irving 
could always find a club of worthies smoking their pipes and whiling 
away the long, lazy summer’s day by telling endless stories. 

But as the boy grew to young manhood, he began to long to go 
further still in his travels. He had seen and loved so much of the 
natural beauty of America, her mighty lakes and mountains, her 
valleys and trackless forests, her broad, deep rivers and boundless 
plains, but now old Europe beckoned him. He longed for her 
treasures of art, her quaint and different customs, her poetic as- 
sociations. He longed to loiter about her ruinous old castles, and 
reconstruct in his fancy all the shadowy grandeur of her past. 
And so when the young maid who had been his sweetheart died 
and there was nothing more to hold him in America, off he went 
to England. Already he was known there as the author of Sal- 
magundi Papers and that humorous mixture of fact and fancy, 
Knickerbocker's History of New York. And so in England he found 


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a place ready made for him. He could travel now as much as he 
pleased and he set down in his Sketch Book all the interesting things 
he saw — little home scenes of rural repose and sheltered quiet, peas- 
ants in country lanes, as well as the solemn magnificence of grand 
old Westminster Abbey. 

A journey to Spain gave him the rich store of Spanish and Moor- 
ish legend to put into two books, The Alhambra and The Conquest of 
Granada. Here, too, he came across certain intensely interesting 
documents concerning Columbus which had heretofore been un- 
known and what must he do but write a wonderful Life of Colum- 
bus. After seventeen long years abroad, he returned at length to 
New York and bought the beautiful place called Sunnyside at 
Tarrytown on the Hudson, not far from Sleepy Hollow. No woman 
ever replaced the sweetheart of his youth and Irving never married, 
but here at beautiful Sunnyside he passed all the rest of his days, 
quitting it only once for any length of time, and then to serve for 
four years as American Minister to Spain. But however great 
was the volume of work that Washington Irving put forth, his 
name always calls first to mind the magic of the Catskills and the 
Hudson, gleaming through mists of romantic old Dutch legends. 

Important Works: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. Rip Van Winkle. 

JACKSON, HELEN HUNT (American, 1831-1885) 

Helen Hunt Jackson once heard two Indians in Boston tell the 
tale of their people’s wrongs at the hands of the American govern- 
ment and she was so moved that she wrote first a pamphlet and 
then the story of Ramona to arouse the public to demand reforms. 

Important Works: Nelly's Silver Mine. Ramona. Cat Stories. 

JACOBS, JOSEPH (English editor, bom in Australia, 1854-) 

Important Works: English Fairy Tales. Celtic Fairy Tales. Indian Fairy Tales. 

JEWETT, SARAH ORNE (American, 1849-1909) 

A Maine woman who wrote very truthful New England stories. 

Important Works: The Country of the Pointed Firs. Betty Leicester. Deephaven. 

JOHNSON, CLIFTON (American, editor of fairy tales 1865-) 

Important Works: The Oak Tree Fairy Book. The Birch Tree Fairy Book. 

124 


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JORDAN, DAVID STARR (American, 1851—) 

Dr. Jordan is a big, simple, warm-hearted, impetuous man 
whose chief work of late years has been the attempt to impress men 
with a sense of the uselessness of war. He grew up on a farm in 
New York and worked his way through college by waiting on table, 
husking com and digging ditches. He became the first president 
of Leland Stanford University and is a scientist of renown. 

Important Works: The Book of Knight and Barbara. True Tales of Birds and Beasts. 

KEATS, JOHN (English, 1795—1821) 

John Keats was a small boy whose father kept a livery stable 
in London, but he was given a good education and proved a stud- 
ious little fellow. Indeed, his masters had to drive him away from 
his books to get him to play out of doors. Books! Books! Books! 
He carried them with him everywhere, even to the dining table 
and fought valiantly if he was disturbed in his reading. A high 
spirited lad he was and always easily moved to deep feeling. Once 
he fought for an hour with a butcher’s boy whom he found tor- 
menting a kitten. In the lad’s heart there dwelt, too, a deep love 
of beauty. The wild beauty and color of the Cornish Coast — how 
he loved it! All nature to him was a poem — the wind in the trees 
was music ! Once he visited the British Museum and saw there the 
lovely old relics of Greek and Roman life. Presto! there sprang 
into life in his heart all that interest in Greek subjects to be shown 
later in his poems. Keats was educated to be a surgeon but friend- 
ship for the poets, Shelley and Leigh Hunt, soon turned all his 
thoughts to poetry. His volumes of verse, however, were violently 
criticised and at length the young poet, sick and disappointed, went 
off to Italy where he died. Then only was he recognized as among 
England’s greatest poets. 

KILMER, JOYCE (American, 1886-1918) 

An active young fellow, full of mirth and keen zest in life was 
Joyce Kilmer. When the World War began he was already a poet 
of renown. He enlisted immediately and was killed in action. 


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KINGSLEY, CHARLES (English, 1818-1875) 

,N the rocky coast of Devonshire lies the queer 
/little fishing village of Clovelly that goes tumbling 
down from the top of the cliff to the bright blue 
waters of the bay below, its little cobble stone street 
so steep that mules can scarcely climb it, and its tiny 
white cottages clinging, goodness knows how! to the 
rock, each peering curiously over the roof of the one below. In 
Clovelly a group of old fishermen may always be found, sunning 
themselves on benches, looking far out to sea and telling wild tales 
of the ocean. Here the rector's small son, Charles Kingsley, used 
often to come to hear the old tars tell their stories, and the life of 
the hardy fishermen, their toils and dangers stirred him deeply. 
All Devonshire — its moors and fens, its fragrant country lanes — 
Charles Kingsley loved it all. 

But by and by, young Charles had to leave his beloved and 
beautiful Devonshire and go to King's College in London. How he 
hated life in the city! Often he dreamed of leaving the University 
and going to America to be a trapper and hunter in the west. Just 
then, however, he fell deeply in love with a certain young lady 
whose parents could not welcome a penniless student. So he made 
haste to finish his schooling and became the curate of Eversley. 

Full of boyish fun and overflowing vitality was the young 
curate of Eversley though he was deeply religious too, and worked 
with tireless enthusiasm. Everybody loved him and he loved every- 
body, the poor and oppressed most of all. Presently he began to 
write pamphlets and books on all the great topics that stirred men's 
minds in his day, and so vigorously did he write that his influence 
spread far beyond the limits of his parish. Slowly he rose to be one 
of the great men of his time, Canon of Westminster and Chaplain 
to Queen Victoria. But the very best of his books are certain stories 
astir with the adventurous spirit of old Clovelly days. 

Important Works: Water Babies. The Heroes. ( Greek Fairy Tales.) Westward Ho! 

LA FONTAINE, JEAN DE (French poet, 1621-1695) 

Fables in Rhyme , illustrated by John Rae. La Fontaine's Fables , illustrated by Boutet de Monvel. 

1 26 


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LAGERLOF, SELMA (Swedish, 1858-) 

IN the pretty rectory at Marbacka Manor in the 
beautiful province of Varmland in Sweden there 
once lived a little girl. The rectory was a lovely 
place, sweet with laughter and peaceful joys, with 
love of books and people. As a little girl, Selma 
Lagerlof preferred reading or imagining stories to out-of-door 
sports. She often played theatre with her brothers and sisters and 
it was always Selma who hung up the quilts and blankets to make 
the stage, dressed up the little actors and told them how to say 
their parts. At Marbacka Manor Selma lived for twenty years, 
reading, writing, and dreaming that sometime a stranger would 
come to her gate and bring her fame by publishing her stories. 

But by and by the pretty old rectory was sold and Selma had 
to go to Stockholm to teach school. One day it flashed upon her 
like a blinding light that she must write a story of the Varmland, of 
the people and country she knew so well. So she began the Saga 
of G'osta Belling. But she wrote so slowly, slowly. It was years be- 
fore the first chapter was finished. Then one day a prize was offered 
by a magazine for the best novelette and Selma’s sister urged her 
to complete the first five chapters of her story. Not only did she 
win the prize but the magazine offered to publish the book if she 
would complete it at once. Accordingly, a friend, gave her enough 
money to free her from the necessity to teach and in a year she 
completed the work. Gosta Belling brought her fame and fortune 
and enabled her to buy back her dear old home in Varmland. 

In 1908 the school authorities invited Selma Lagerlof to write 
a book for the schools which should keep in the hearts of the young 
people of today the old folk-lore and history of Sweden and teach 
them the geography and the natural history of their country . The 
results were The Wondeiful Adventuies of Nils and Fuithei Adven- 
tuies of Nils, books which are classics in every country, and won 
for Selma the Nobel prize, the world’s greatest prize for literature. 



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LARCOM, LUCY (American, 1826-1893) 

A girl who worked in the mills at Lowell, Mass, and wrote for 
the mill worker's magazine. Later the editor of Our Young Folks . 
LAZARUS, EMMA (American, 1849-1887) 

Emma Lazarus was a young Jewish girl, shy and sensitive, 
who lived in a world of poetry and books and published her first 
volume of verse when she was fifteen, sombre, tragic poems breath- 
ing the tragic spirit of her race. She worshiped Emerson and he 
was her literary adviser, writing her what books to study. After 
the anti-Jewish outrages in Russia and Germany in 1881, she threw 
herself heart and soul into the movement against such barbarism. 
Not only did she write poetry in a crusade of protest but she worked 
untiringly among the terror-stricken immigrants who flocked into 
this country. Such a woman could well understand what America 
meant as a land of promise to the poor and oppressed of Europe. 
LEAR, EDWARD (English, 1812-1888) 

Lear’s Nonsense Rhymes with their comic pictures are child classics. 
LINDSAY, MAUD (American kindergarten worker, 1874-) 

Important Works: Mother Stories. More Mother Stories. Story Garden for Little Children. 

LINDSAY, NICHOLAS VACHELL (American, 1879-) 

A young boy from Springfield, Illinois, once dreamed an exciting 
dream of an old fashioned battle between armored men. He jumped 
out of bed at once and wrote the dream down in a poem called The 
Battle . But the next morning his poem seemed so much less inter- 
esting than his dream that he had to help it out by drawing a pic- 
ture! When the same poet-artist began, however, to write verse 
in earnest in New York he found no market for his poems. Ac- 
cordingly, he decided that the common man must learn to reverence 
beauty before beauty could succeed in America. With only a 
bundle of songs for his fortune, he left New York and tramped 
through eight states, begging food and lodgings as he went and re- 
citing his poems in return, preaching the gospel of beauty to the 
farmer, the most worth while element, he believed, in American life. 

Important Works: The Congo. The Chinese Nightingale 
128 


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LONGFELLOW, HENRY WADSWORTH (1807-1882.) 

N an historic old wooden house, overshadowed 
by splendid elms and standing on one of the spa- 
cious streets of Cambridge, that delightful old 
university town, there lived once a modest, deep- 
hearted gentleman whose highest ambition was to 
be a perfect man and through sympathy and love 
to help others to be the same. The old house had 
been built before the Revolution and occupied by 
Washington when he took command of the American army in 1776. 
Its study windows looked across the green Brighton meadows far 
away to the Brookline hills. It was in that study just at twilight 
that the poet used to hear the patter of little feet in the room above 
him and see, in the lamplight, his children on the stairs. A rush 
and a raid from the doorway, they were swarming over his chair — 
Alice, laughing Allegra and “Edith with golden hair.” 

A scholar and a poet was Longfellow, a Professor at Harvard 
University, and yet he always seemed to have time for everybody 
and everything. Never was he too busy to see a caller, or to help by 
word or deed whoever was in distress. Often strangers called to 
see him, or children, not venturing to call, hung about his garden 
gate, hoping just to catch a glimpse of him. To such his courtesy 
was complete. He never seemed to think they had come for a peep 
at him, but took it for granted that they wanted to see Washing- 
ton’s study, which he showed them with simple pleasure. Indeed, 
far from trying to hide himself from intruders, he rarely even drew 
the blinds of his study windows at night. What a sunny, genial 
nature was his, full of courage, tenderness and strength. In joy 
and sorrow, he lived life beautifully and happily, with neither envy 
nor malice and with unbounded charity. 

Through his mother Longfellow was descended from John Alden 
and Priscilla, those precious Puritan lovers whose quaint courtship 
he described so beautifully in Miles Standish. In his boyhood he 



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MY BOOK HOUSE 

lived amid the quiet surroundings of Portland, Maine, where he was 
born, and he never forgot the pleasant streets of that dear old town, 
the shadowy lines of trees which permit, here and there through 
their branches, a sudden glimpse of the sea. He never forgot 
“ the black wharves and the slips, 

And the sea-tides tossing free, 

And Spanish sailors with bearded lips. 

And the beauty and mystery of the ships, 

And the magic of the sea.” 

His college days at Bowdoin, where he was a classmate of 
Hawthorne, introduced him to the falls of the Androscoggin River, 
wild scenery and rich in Indian lore and legend. The greater part 
of his life, however, was spent at Cambridge, writing and teaching, 
quiet days and little varied save for frequent trips to Europe. He 
was a poet of the past, of legendary heroes, and not like Lowell, a 
moulder of the present, but the music and deep feeling in his work 
have made him more beloved than any other American poet. 

Important Works: Hiawatha. The Courtship of Miles Standish. Evangeline. 

LOTHROP, (MARGARET SIDNEY) American 1844- 

Important Works: The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew. 

LOWELL, AMY (American, 1874-) 

Amy Lowell holds a high rank among the modem school of 
poets for her imagery, color, power and vivid characterization. 
LOWELL, JAMES RUSSELL (American, 1819-1891) 

The foremost American poet in expressing the ideals of the 
early American republic, and the first editor of T he Atlantic Monthly. 
MacDONALD, GEORGE (Scotch, 1824-1905) 

George MacDonald was a minister, teacher and writer who 
kept through life the heart of a child. He was deeply religious, 
though not in the conventional way, and had a heart overflowing 
with charity for all. Though he was never very well off and had 
a family of eleven children of his own, he frequently added to it by 
adopting children in need, and his most enduring work has proved 
to be his beautiful children’s stories. 

At the Back of the North Wind. The Princess and Cur die. The Princess and the Goblin. 


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KEY 



MARE, WALTER DE LA (English poet, 1873- ) 

MARKHAM, CHARLES EDWIN (American, 1852- ) 

LITTLE five year old boy once went from Oregon 
City to live with his widowed mother and deaf and 
dumb brother on a lonely ranch in California. Here 
the boy worked at farming, blacksmithing, herding, 
and when he earned twenty dollars for ploughing a 
neighbor’s field, he bought himself some books. But his mother 
was a stern, hard woman, who cared little about his education, so 
at length the boy ran away from home to work with a band of 
threshers, nor would he return until his mother promised to let him 
work his way through school. In college Markham supported him- 
self by teaching freshman classes while doing sophomore and junior 
work, and he and four other students lived in a bare room under 
the college bell-tower, cooking their own meals, which consisted 
chiefly of beans! When he began writing verse for the California 
papers he found success and later did newspaper work in New 
York. His best known poem is The Man with the Hoe. 
MASEFIELD, JOHN (English 1878- ) 

S a small boy Masefield used to run away from 
home, sometimes for days at a time, so at last his 
father sent him to sea to work off his surplus energy 
aboard a merchant vessel. For ten years he lived on 
the ocean and gained there that love of ships and the 
sea which colors all his work. But when he was six- 
teen he left the ship at New York with five dollars 
and a chest of clothes, fired now with desire to study. He worked 
on a farm, in a bakery, in a hotel, and in a carpet factory, but every 
Friday on pay day he went to the book store and bought books. 
Then the day came when he began to write. He has written stir- 
ring narrative poems and splendid stories of adventure. 

Important Works: Marlin Hyde, the Duke's Messenger. Jim Davis. Voyages of Discovery. 

MEREDITH, GEORGE (English novelist, 1822-1909) 

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MILLER, JOAQUIN (Cincinnatus Heine Miller) 1841-1913. 

A prairie schooner in early pioneer days, toiling westward, 
westward, across the desert, across the Rockies, across the Sierras; 
and in the lumbering old wagon among his elders, a small boy 
named Cincinnatus Heine Miller. The boy’s family were on their 
way from Indiana where he had been bom, to settle in Oregon. 
The very spirit of the West seemed to breathe itself into that boy, 
the free breezy spirit of America’s great western plains, where 
there is “room, room to turn round in, to breathe and be free,” 



“And to east and to west, to the north and the sun. 
Blue skies and brown grasses are welded as one, 

And the buffalo come, like a cloud on the plain. 
Pouring on like the tide of a storm-driven main, 

And the lodge of the hunter to friend and to foe 
Offers rest; and unquestioned you come and you go.' 



Young Cincinnatus was often in need of money so he once set 
out sturdily from home and joined a wood-cutters’ camp. There 
the small urchin was found by his elders chopping away at a great 
rate, nor would he return until he had earned what he set out to 
get. Later he joined the gold-miners in California and for five 
years he lived among the Pacific Coast Indians. In Canyon City, 
Colorado, where he practiced law, he met a certain Mexican bandit 
named Joaquin (Walk-in) whose name struck him as so much more 
picturesque and interesting than his own that he cast away Cin- 
cinnatus Heine forever and henceforth called himself Joaquin. 
Soon he published a volume of western poems called Joaquin 
et al but it was when he went to London a few years later that 
the big breezy westerner made his first great success with Songs of 
the Sierras. England grew most enthusiastic and feted him every- 
where. At all festivities he appeared in a flannel shirt and sombrero! 

In a beautiful retreat called “The Heights” on the crest of a 
mountain in California he passed the later years of his life. Here 
he lived in good old western simplicity with his mother and a few 
friends, the best loved writer of the West, the Poet of the Sierras. 

Important Works: True Bear Stories. 


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MILTON, JOHN (English, 1608-1674) 

John Milton was a stem old Puritan, a born rebel from his boy- 
hood, an apostle of liberty, who hated tyranny and was yet neither 
gracious nor tender. He was Secretary for Foreign Tongues to 
Oliver Cromwell, the Puritan Protector of England, and during 
that work became totally blind. But with his tremendous power 
and force he never gave up his work. Out under the trees in his 
garden he forced his three daughters to read to him hour after 
hour, long, tiresome books of which they often understood nothing. 

With Cromwell’s death and the return of the Royalists to power, 
Milton lost his standing and was forced for a time to go into hiding. 
His books against the Royalist cause were publicly burnt and he 
himself was thrown into prison. When he was released, he was a 
friendless old man, blind as well, but with that tremendous spirit 
of his he set to work once again and finished the most powerful of 
all his works, one of the greatest epic poems in the English lang- 
uage — Paradise Lost, as well as two other long poems. 
NEKRASSOV, NIKOLAI ALEXEIEVITCH (Russian, 1821-78) 
Nekrassov was one of the early patriots of Russia who dared 
to speak out against the tyranny and oppression of the Czar. His 
mother was a gentle Polish woman who gave her whole life to 
teaching him, instilling into him, heart and soul, the love of simple, 
kindly things. This made him hate all the more the ugly punish- 
ments he saw when he went on trips with his father, a brutal 
Russian officer and Chief of District Police. When Nikolai re- 
fused to be a soldier his father disinherited him. For three years 
he worked his way through college, hungry day and night, but at 
last by his ceaseless efforts he made a place for himself in the 
literary world and rose to be Editor of Russia’s foremost maga- 
zine. Through his vivid pen-pictures of all types of Russian life, 
he led young Russia to hate oppression, to understand the various 
classes of their own country, especially the working class, and to 
love freedom. 


i33 


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NESBIT, EDITH (English writer of children’s stories, 1858-) 
NEWELL, PETER (American, 1862-) 

One of the most original of humorists, whose 
drawings of funny little round-eyed children 
exactly fit his funny little verses. 

Pictures and Rhymes. The Top Turveys. The Slant Book. 

NOEL, THOMAS (English poet, 1799-1861) 

NOYES, ALFRED (English, 1880-) 

One of the foremost English poets of the present day. He was 
bom in Staffordshire and educated at Oxford. In 1913 he gave a 
course of lectures in Boston on The Sea in English Poetry and was, 
for the next three years, visiting professor at Princeton University. 



PAINE ALB ERT BIGELOW (American, 1861-) 
fKfSEST _ Albert Bigelow Paine was born in New Bedford, 
Maine and educated at Xenia, Illinois. He began 
writing for the Kansas newspapers while living in 
I Fort Scott, and from there went to New York. He 

! has been a department editor of St. Nicholas and 

has written many delightful stories for children. 

Important Works: The Arkansaw Bear. Hollow Tree and Deep Woods Book. 



PERRAULT, CHARLES (French, 1628-1703) 

A courtly French author who made the first collection of French 
Fairy Tales which he called Tales oj Mother Goose. These were not 
the jingles, but the stories of Cinderella, The Sleeping Beauty, etc. 
POE, EDGAR ALLAN (American, 1809-1849) 

A great American poet and writer of short stories, but of an 
eccentric genius, dark and unhappy. 

POULSSON, ANNE EMILIE (1853-) 

Miss Poulsson is a prominent kindergarten worker. 

Important Works: Father and Baby Plays. T he Runaway Donkey. T hrough the Farmyard Gate 

PRENTISS, ELIZABETH (American, 1818-1878) 

PRINGLE, THOMAS (Scotch, 1789-1834) 

A Scotch writer who made an interesting trip to Africa. 


134 


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PYLE, HOWARD (American, 1853-1911) 

SMALL boy once lay on the rug before 
the fire in a certain house in Wilming- 
ton, Delaware, while his mother read 
him Robinson Crusoe. Vividly he pic- 
tured to himself all the interesting his- 
tory of that venturesome hero as he 
tramped about on his lonely island with 
the savage, Friday. Sometimes How- 
ard Pyle’s mother read him Gulliver’s 
Travels, Tanglewood Tales, Ivanhoe or 
ithe Arabian Nights, but whatever she 
read, he always lay there and saw 
pictures, pictures, pictures. Often he tried to put these pictures 
down in drawing. Indeed, his mother inspired him early with a 
love of all beautiful things — particularly pictures and books. 
Once when he was a very tiny boy he felt himself so moved to write 
a poem that he called for paper and pencil and was sitting with 
paper on knee all ready to write before he ever-stopped to think 
that he did not yet know how to read nor to make a single letter! 
Keen was young Howard’s disappointment. 

Rather than go to college when he grew up, Howard Pyle went 
to an art school where his ability to make pictures was trained. 
Since he so dearly loved pictures in books he began making illus- 
trations and soon he was both writing and illustrating his own 
stories. How he loved a quaint old picturesque tale of adventure, 
whether of knights or of pirates, and he left boys and girls many 
tales of both, illustrated with vigor and a keen love of color and 
beauty, for Howard Pyle was one of America’s foremost illustrators. 

The Garden Behind the Moon. The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood. Men of Iron. 

The Wonder Clock . Otto of the Silver Hand. Stolen Treasure. Pepper and Salt. 

KATHERINE PYLE (American contemporary) 

Katherine Pyle is the sister of Howard Pyle and is herself an 
author and artist of unusual merit. 

As the Goose Flies. The Christmas Angel. Careless Jane. Fairy Tales from Many Lands. 

135 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

RAMEE, LOUISE DE LA (1859-1908) 

Once there was a little girl living in France, the 
child of a French father and an English mother. 
When she began trying to say her own name, Louisa, 
she could call herself nothing but “Ouida.” Little 
did she or her parents dream then that she was going 
to make that name of Ouida famous. When she was twenty she 
left France and went to England where she began at once to write 
stories. Her romances were extravagant, sentimental and impos- 
sible things but they were wildly popular and they made her a large 
fortune. Then off went Miss Ouida to live in Italy in such fashion 
as she deemed fitting for a wealthy and famous young novelist. 
Tales are told of how she rode through the streets of Florence in a 
coach lined with sky-blue leather, wearing an orange colored dress 
and black lace mantilla. Poor, foolish, little lady. In spite of her 
great success and her many fine qualities she was helpless, vain, and 
unbusinesslike and her last years found her in poverty, deserted by 
all save a few dumb pets of which she was always passionately 
fond. Her only work of real value is that written for children. 

Important Works: The Dog of Flanders. The Nuremberg Stove. Bimbi. Moufflon 

RANDS, WILLIAM BRIGHTY (English, 1823-1880) 
RANSOME, ARTHUR (English, contemporary) 

RICHARDS, LAURA E. (American, contemporary) 

Daughter of Julia Ward Howe and a noted writer for children. 

Important Works: Captain January. The Joyous Story of Toto. The Golden Windows. 

RILEY, JAMES WHITCOMB (American, 1853-1916) 

James Whitcomb Riley is the beloved poet of Indiana, the 
Hoosier poet, who has written so many homely, heartfelt things 
of and for the people, in their own simple style and idiom. He 
worked first as a sign painter, then joined a company of strolling 
players for whom he wrote songs and plays. Later he was one of 
the editors of the Indianapolis Journal. A genuine poet of child- 
hood was Riley, too, full of deep love and sympathy for children. 

A Host of Children ( Riley's child rhymes illustrated in color) 

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THE LATCH KEY 

THEODORE (American, 1858-1919) 

A sturdy young fellow, alert and energetic of 
movement, his spectacles gleaming in the sun, 
was making his way on a tough little western pony 
toward Chimney Butte Ranch on the Little Mis- 
souri River in the Bad Lands of North Dakota. 
All around him the country was bare, wild and 
desolate, vast stretches of bleak prairie, parched 
by the scorching sun and varied only by abrupt 
and savage hills called by the cowboys buttes. It 
was a land of enormous distances, stretching away forever, with no 
farms and no fences, only at wide intervals little log ranch houses 
with mud roofs where lived the ranchmen whose herds ranged over 
the prairie. In the fertile river bottoms hundreds of long-homed 
cattle grazed while cowboys dashed recklessly among them on half- 
broken ponies. No soft loveliness in such a scene, only a wild, 
stark, bold and rugged beauty that made it a fit background for 
the bold and rugged men who lived and worked there. Such a 
scene had a strange appeal for Theodore Roosevelt. He loved it; 
vigorous outdoor life in that wild country thrilled him; he wanted 
to feel himself the comrade of the men who lived there. And so a 
year ago he had bought Chimney Butte Ranch. Queer! A New 
Yorker of a wealthy old Dutch family, who had lived all his life 
in an aristocratic section of New York and was a graduate of Har- 
vard University into the bargain, choosing such a primitive life 
of toil and hardship, and queerer still that the rough plainsmen 
should overcome their prejudice against Eastern “dudes”, and 
love and admire Theodore Roosevelt. Back in New York a great 
sorrow had just befallen the young man, the loss of his wife, and 
he had come out to Dakota to fling himself heart and soul into the 
work of the ranch and forget his grief in activity. 

It was over at Elkhom Ranch that Roosevelt now kept most 
of his stock. One day he had followed the Little Missouri River 

•Read The Boy’s Life of Roosevelt by Hermann Hagedorn 

137 



MY BOOK HOUSE 

forty miles north of Chimney Butte where it takes a long swing 
westward through a fertile bottom bordered by sheer cliffs. There 
on a low bluff surmounted by cottonwood trees he found the inter- 
locked antlers of two great elk and he decided that this was a better 
place for his ranch than Chimney Butte. So he and his men had 
driven the cattle over and taken possession of the rude little shack 
already built there. It was a company of quiet, bronzed, self- 
reliant men with whom Roosevelt had surrounded himself out there 
in the West. There were Joe Ferris and Joe and Sylvaine Mer- 
rifield, seasoned plainsmen who were in charge of Chimney Butte 
Ranch when he first came out and hunted buffalo with them a year 
before. And there were the two backwoodsmen from Maine, whom 
Roosevelt had gone east to fetch, Bill Sewall and his nephew, Will 
Dow. Bill Sewall was a character. Roosevelt had learned to know 
and love him in his Harvard days when he went up to Lake Mat- 
tawamkeag to hunt in the Maine wilderness. A stalwart, vigorous 
man with an indomitable spirit was Sewall, the sort of man who 
could hew down with his axe forty or fifty giants of the forest in 
one day, who gloried in the conflict with wind and storm and was 
the happiest in his canoe on Mattawamkeag when the waves were 
highest, exulting in his strength and bidding the elements defiance. 
This man was all his life long one of Roosevelt’s closest friends. 

In the fall, when everything was well settled at Elkhom, Roose- 
velt set out for a round-up in the great cattle country west of the 
Little Missouri. The search for stray cattle took him and his party 
across southeastern Montana and halfway across Wyoming to the 
very base of the Big Horn Mountains, where eight years before 
General Custer had been killed by the Indians. Those mountains 
tempted Roosevelt. The work of rounding up cattle was now 
well over so he and Merrifield took a pack-train and leaving their 
canvas covered wagon with the rest of the party, they started up 
into the mountains. Along an old Indian trail through dense pine 
woods and up the sides of rocky gorges they ascended — up and up 

138 


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and up, driving their pack-train with 
endless difficulty over fallen timber and 
along the edge of dizzy precipices. At 
length they camped in a beautiful glade 
surrounded by pine trees, pitching their 
tents beside a clear running mountain 
brook. From here they hunted among 
the peaks round about. The weather 
was clear and cold with thin ice covering 
the mountain tarns and now and again 
light falls of snow made the forest gleam 
in the moonlight. Through the frosty air they could often hear the 
far-off musical note of the bull-elk calling. Roosevelt loved the 
adventure of the chase, but he loved even more the majesty of the 
trees and the companionship of all the shy wild creatures that 
sprang across his path. What alluring glimpses he caught of the 
inner life of the mountains. But when indeed he set out to hunt, he 
pursued his aim with dogged persistence. He might be sobbing for 
breath and with sweat streaming into his eyes but if he was after an 
elk, after an elk he continued to be in spite of all misadventures 
until he got one ; if his aim was a grizzly he kept on the warpath and 
never rested until the grizzly was his. Certainly Theodore Roose- 
velt never avoided difficulties. He pressed on determinedly 
through them, and made difficulties contribute to his success. 

After some days in the mountains the two men at length rejoined 
their wagon and started on the three hundred mile journey home. 
It was long and weary travelling, galloping beside the lumbering 
wagon over the desolate prairie. After many days they reached 
a strange and romantic region — isolated buttes of sandstone cut 
by the weather into curious caves and columns, battlements 
and spires. A beautiful and fantastic place it was, and here they 
made their camp. Soon the flame of their camp fire went leaping 
up the cliffs till those weird and solemn shapes seemed to writhe 


H 



139 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

into life. Outside the circle of the firelight the cliffs shone sil- 
ver beneath a great full moon and threw grotesque black shadows 
across the dusky plain. But, the next morning, all was changed, 
a gale was blowing and the rain came beating down. A miserable 
day and night followed and then another. Not until the third day 
dawned could they start on their way again. That night they 
camped by a dry creek in a broad bottom covered with thick 
parched grass. To make sure that their camp fire should not set 
the surrounding grass alight, they burned a circle clear, standing 
about with branches to keep the flames in check. Suddenly a puff 
of wind! The fire leapt up and roared like a beast as it raced along 
the plain. In five minutes the whole bottom would be ablaze. 
The men fought furiously. Hair and eyebrows were singed black, 
but they kept on fighting until the flames were subdued. 

At this time they were still three days from home as the crawl- 
ing team would make the journey, so Roosevelt concluded after 
supper that night to press on ahead of the wagon with Merrifield 
and ride the full distance before dawn. At nine o’clock they sad- 
dled the tough little ponies they had ridden all day and rode off out 
of the circle of firelight, loping mile after mile beneath the moon 
and the stars. Now and again bands of antelope swept silently by 
them and once a drove of cattle charged past, dark figures that 
set the ground rumbling beneath their heavy tread. The first 
glow of the sun was touching the level bluffs of Chimney Butte 
into light as they galloped into the valley of the Little Missouri. 

Winter was hard at Chimney Butte that year as always. There 
was little snow but the cold was fierce in its intensity. The trees 
cracked and groaned from the strain of the frost and even the stars 
seemed to snap and glitter. The river lay frozen fast and wolves 
and lynxes travelled up and down it at night as though it had been 
a highway. Roosevelt lived chiefly now at Chimney Butte writ- 
ing somewhat on books he had started and reading much but shar- 
ing, too, all the hardships of the winter work. It was not pleasant 


140 


THE LATCH KEY 

to be out of doors in the biting wind but the herds had to be 
watched. The cattle suffered much and stood in shivering groups 
huddled together in the shelter of the canyons. Every day for 
Roosevelt began with breakfast at five o’clock, three hours before 
sunrise, and from then until dark he or his men were almost con- 
stantly in the saddle, riding about among the cattle and turning 
back any that seemed to be straggling away toward the open plain. 

During the severest weather there were fifty new-bought and 
decidedly refractory ponies to be broken. Day after day in the 
icy cold Roosevelt labored patiently in the corral among them. 
More than once he was bucked by his steed in the presence of a 
gallery of grinning cowboys, but in the end it was noteworthy that 
it was always the pony and not Roosevelt who was broken! 

In the late Spring the men built a new ranch house at Elkhorn, 
plain but comfortable and homelike. Then Will Dow went back 
east to Maine and returned with a newly married bride of his own 
and with Bill Sewall’s wife and little three year old daughter. 
These women were backwoodswomen, self-reliant, fearless, high 
hearted as their mates. What with their cheery voices, their 
thinking of this and that to make life more pleasant, their baking 
and putting all things in order at the ranch, they soon turned the 
house into a real home. Now began happy days at Elkhorn, days 
of elemental toil and hardship, and of strong, elemental pleasures, 
rest after labor, food after hunger, warmth and shelter after bitter 
cold. No room here for social distinctions. Each respected and 
loved the other because each knew the other to be steadfast, loyal 
and true. Roosevelt saddled his own horse, fed the pigs and now 
and then washed his own clothes. Through the cold evenings he 
loved to stretch himself out at full length on the elk hides and wolf 
skins before the great fireplace while the blazing logs cracked and 
roared. Doubtless he often thought back then on his own life. 

What an alert, energetic, enthusiastic, little fellow he had been, 
frail in body originally, for he had acquired that tough physique of 

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MY BOOK HOUSE 

his only through persistent facing of hardships. His first deep 
interest had been in natural history. O that Museum of Natural 
History he had founded at the age of nine! And the treatise he 
had written in a two-for-a-nickel note book, “Natural History on 
Insects” wherein with the most picturesque spelling he wrote of 
“beetlles”,“misqueto hawks”, ants, etc. all whose “habbits” he 
declared he had gained from his own “ofservation”. He had pur- 
sued the study of natural history with an almost ruthless singleness 
of purpose, just as he did all things all through life. If it seemed 
to him necessary for his studies that he keep a few dead field mice 
in the family refrigerator he did so, if he felt obliged to have a snake 
or two in the guest room water pitcher, that he did likewise. For 
a few years, whether in America, or in Europe, or journeying up 
the Nile with his parents, his brother and sister, he had the one 
single aim of chasing down specimens for his study. And he never 
lost that interest in natural history, but gradually there began to 
awake in him deeper interests and stirring dreams. He was thrilled 
by the heroes of the old epics. He wanted to be like them. He 
wanted to be of the company of the doers of deeds, men who faced 
life and death calmly with clear eyes and did not rate life too highly 
in the balance with what they deemed justice. And gradually he 
became more and more deeply aware of the struggle it is to trans- 
late dreams into reality. He saw ever more clearly that men attain 
only through endless struggle against the sloth, the love of ease, 
the impurities, the doubts and fears of their own hearts. But every 
aspiration in him reached out to be one with whose who throughout 
all ages have fought the battles of Right against Wrong and he 
determined to build up for himself a clean, valiant, fighting soul. 

When he was graduated from college he decided that the real 
fighters of his day were the men who went into politics and used 
their weapons there in behalf of Justice and Fair Play, so he delib- 
erately joined the Twenty-fifth District Republican Association. 

“But politics are so low” said his aristocratic friends with their 


142 


THE LATCH KEY 

noses in the air. “And political organizations are not controlled by 
gentlemen, but by saloon keepers, street car conductors and the 
like!” “Very well,” replied Theodore with emphasis, “If saloon 
keepers and street car conductors are the men who are governing 
the United States, and lawyers and merchants are merely the ones 
being governed, then decidedly saloon keepers and street car con- 
ductors are the ones I want to know.” And off he went to attend 
meetings of the Association in a great barnlike hall over a saloon in 
59th Street. Joe Murray, a stockily built Irishman with a strong 
chin and twinkling eyes who had come to America steerage at the 
age of three, might not be so romatic as an old Norse Viking but he 
was a good fighter when it came to doing battle with the Political 
Ring and its “Big Boss” who had governed the Twenty-fifth Dis- 
trict in their own interests for years. Young Roosevelt joined 
forces with Joe Murray, standing vehemently for whatever he 
deemed was right, and the first thing he knew he had defeated the 
Big Boss and his Ring and was elected a member of the New York 
State Assembly. There he was distinguishing himself for attacks 
on many corrupt practices that needed reforming when the death 
of his wife in 1883 sent him West to Chimney Butte. 

The summer days following the coming of the women at Elk- 
horn were full of vigorous toil. Much of the time Roosevelt was 
away from the ranch on round-ups. He enjoyed enormously the 
rough but hearty comradeship of these gatherings which brought 
him in touch with the ranchmen and cowboys from hundreds of 
miles around. Whenever he arrived at the round-up he always re- 
ported at once to the Captain, who assigned him to some wagon- 
boss. He then deposited his bedding outside the ring in no one’s 
way and ate his supper in silence, turning a deaf ear to certain 
gibing remarks that were certain to be made about “four eyes” 
for the cowboys regarded spectacles as the surest sign of a “dude”. 
There were rough enough characters among those men, too, but 
Roosevelt’s doctrine of “do your job and keep your mouth shut” 


143 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

as well as the absolute fearlessness with which he occasionally stood 
up to some “tough customer" who was attempting to make sport 
of him, usually kept him out of trouble. 

Work on the round-up began at three in the morning with a 
yell from the cook and lasted till sundown or sometimes all the 
night through. In the morning the cowboys “rode the long circle" 
in couples, driving into the wagon-camp whatever animals were 
found in the hills. The afternoon was spent in the difficult and 
dangerous work of “cutting out" of the herd thus gathered the 
cattle belonging to the various brands. Representatives of each 
brand rode in succession into the midst of the herd, working the ani- 
mal they were after gently to the edge, and then, with a sudden dash 
taking it off at a run. At night there was often guard duty about 
the restless herd. One evening a heavy storm broke over the camp. 
There was a terrific peal of thunder, and the lightning struck almost 
into the herd. Heads and tails high, off plunged the panic stricken 
cattle into the blackness, and for forty hours Roosevelt was in the 
saddle driving the scattered herd together again. After that the 
cow-punchers decided that the man with the four eyes “had the 
stuff in him" after all. And so, quietly “doing his job" day by day, 
accepting the discipline of the camp and the orders of the Captain 
of the Round-up, Roosevelt gradually won a place for himself in 
the rough world of the Bad Lands. He was not a crack rider or a 
fancy roper, just as it was true that he had never had a special gift 
in any line, but he was unflinchingly persistent in whatever he un- 
dertook and he put into all he did every ounce of energy and en- 
thusiasm in him, so that he often outdid far more gifted men. 

Winter passed and Spring came early that year at Elkhom. 
About the middle of March a great ice jam came slowly drifting 
past the ranch, roaring and crunching, and piling the ice high on 
both banks, even grinding against the porch and the cottonwood 
trees and threatening to wash the house away. But the force of 
the freshet gradually carried the jam on. Then Bill Sewall dis- 


144 


THE LATCH KEY 

covered that their 
one and only boat 
had been stolen 
from its moorings. 

Now there had re- 
cently been three 
suspicious charac- 
ters seen in the 
neighborhood, 
thieves fleeing from 
justice, the leader 
of whom was a des- 
perado named Fin- 
negan, and the men did not doubt that they had stolen the boat. 
Roosevelt had been made a deputy sheriff and he conceived it to be 
his duty to start out after these thieves. The country was impas- 
sable on horses or foot, so Sewall and Dow built a flat-bottomed 
boat and in three days the men set out, with provisions for two 
weeks. The region through which they travelled was bleak and 
terrible. On either side beyond the piles of ice rose scarred buttes, 
weather-worn into the most fantastic shapes. It was zero weather, 
too, and there was an icy wind in their faces, but they found fire 
wood in plenty and prairie fowl and deer -for every meal. Late on 
the third day, on rounding a bend, they suddenly saw their boat 
moored to the shore. Out of the bushes a little way back went 
curling the smoke of a camp-fire. The men leapt ashore and ad- 
vanced cautiously through the underbush. Beside the fire, in the 
shelter of a cut-bank, they saw a solitary figure with a gun on the 
ground beside him. Hands up! Roosevelt and Dow rushed on 
the man, a half-witted German, who had been left to guard the 
camp while Finnegan and a half-breed Swede went hunting. The 
German made haste to obey. Sewall stood guard over him while 
Roosevelt and Dow crouched under the bank and waited for the 



i45 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

others. At the end of an hour, they saw them leisurely coming 
through the grass. Roosevelt cried at once, “Hands up!” The 
Swede obeyed but Finnegan glared and hesitated. Then Roosevelt 
advanced on him covering him with his gun and repeating, “You 
thief, put up your hands.” With an oath Finnegan dropped his 
rifle and obeyed. 

That night the men from Elkhorn camped where they were, 
guarding their prisoners well, but the next day they found that 
their return passage had been barred by the ice jam which had 
floated down from Elkhorn. Day after day they waited hoping 
for a thaw. Their provisions ran short and there was no game to 
be found in that neighborhood. They were reduced for food to 
unleavened bread made with muddy water. So the days passed 
with utter tediousness and the thieves had to be watched every min- 
ute. At last Roosevelt, scouring the neighborhood, found an out- 
lying cow-camp where he got a wiry, fractious little horse. On this 
he rode fifteen miles to a ranch where he secured supplies and a 
prairie schooner, hiring the ranchman to drive the wagon himself 
to the camp by the ice-bound river. Thus thoroughly provisioned 
again, Sewall and Dow waited with the boats while Roosevelt 
started out with the thieves and the prairie schooner for the nearest 
jail, a desolate ten days’ journey across the prairie. Not for a 
moment did Roosevelt dare abate his watch on the prisoners so he 
made them get up into the wagon while he walked behind with his 
gun. Hour after hour he waded through ankle-deep mud, hungry, 
cold, fatigued, but now, as ever, determined to carry the matter 
through at any cost. The very last night they put up at the squalid 
hut of a frontier granger, but Roosevelt, weary as he was, dared not 
sleep. He crowded the prisoners into an upper bunk and sat against 
the cabin door till dawn with his gun across his knee. On the 
following evening he deposited the thieves in jail. 

And so Theodore Roosevelt, living, talking, working, facing 
dangers and suffering hardships with Dow, Sewall, Merrifield, 

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THE LATCH KEY 

Ferris and countless other stalwart citizens of the Bad Lands, came 
very close to the heart of the “plain American.” But the day came 
at last when he found he must leave his beloved Elkhorn and re- 
turn to New York. His ranch did not pay from the money stand- 
point. Moreover he was to marry again and life was calling 
him back to be a “doer of deeds” in another way. 

Soon it was dishonesty and corruption he was fighting as a mem- 
ber of the United States Civil Service Commission. In 1895 
he was doing the same as Police Commissioner of the City of New 
York, and when the tyranny and cruelty of Spain toward the little 
island of Cuba forced the United States to declare war on Spain, 
Roosevelt, then Assistant Secretary of the Navy under President 
McKinley, resigned his post at once and offered to recruit a regi- 
ment of mounted riflemen from among the skilled horsemen of 
the plains. Of this organization, the Rough Riders, Leonard 
Wood was Colonel and Theodore Roosevelt was Lieutenant Colo- 
nel. These were days for Roosevelt to remember his old friends 
of the Bad Lands and they came flocking to his standard. But 
the Rough Riders were not all cowboys; they were bronco-busters 
and Fifth Avenue aristocrats, western badmen and eastern college 
boys, a valiant, if motley crew. After the first battle of Las 
Guasimos in the Cuban jungle, Wood was advanced in command 
and Roosevelt was made Colonel of the Rough Riders. So it 
happened that at the decisive battle of San Juan Hill on the 
road to Santiago, it was Roosevelt, his face streaked with dirt and 
sweat, his trousers and boots caked with Cuban mud, a blue ban- 
dana handkerchief with white polka dots floating like a banner 
from his soiled campaign hat, whom the Rough Riders followed 
over crest after crest of the San Juan Hills, on, on to victory. 

Overnight Roosevelt became a popular hero. He returned to 
the United States to be elected Governor of New York and two 
years later at the National Republican Convention a perfect stam- 
pede of western delegates forced him against his will to accept the 

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nomination for Vice President of the United States with William 
McKinley as President. Then came the day when McKinley was 
shot at Buffalo. The summons for Roosevelt reached him in the 
heart of the Adirondacks where he had just been climbing Mt. 
Marcy. In a light buckboard wagon, dashing along almost on one 
wheel over a well-nigh impassable road that had been cut into 
gorges only a day or two before by a cloudburst, Roosevelt went 
down through the night to the nearest railroad, with a heart awed 
by his great responsibility, to be President of the United States. 

And now for a time he pursued no more buffalo and elk, but 
with the same dogged courage and persistence he had shown on 
the western plains, he pursued Big Business and Unjust Privilege, 
the Railroad Trust, the Beef Trust and all other big corporations 
who were defrauding the public. He settled a coal strike that 
threatened the welfare of all the country; he brought about peace 
between Russia and Japan in the days of the Russo-Japanese war; 
he put through the Panama Canal, and gradually he began to 
stand out everywhere in the world as the greatest and most typ- 
ical American of all, one who knew no neutrality when Right or 
Wrong was the issue, but stood vigorously, aggressively if need be, 
for the Right, the very personification of that moral force in man 
which translates ideals into accomplished facts. 

Important Works: Winning of the West Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail. The Rough Riders 

ROSSETTI, CHRISTINA G. (English Poet, 1830-1894) 

Important Works: The Goblin Market. Sing-Song (. Beautiful Verses for Children) 

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RUSKIN, JOHN (English, 1819-1900) 

HERE was once a small boy who deeply loved beauty. 
Even as a little fellow he was frequently taken to 
Europe in search of all that was lovely. By the time he 
was three years old he was already so fond of nature, 
that, when an artist who was painting his portrait asked him what 
he would like to have for a background behind him in the picture, 
he piped up at once and answered, “Blue hills.” 

When he grew to be a man, Ruskin began writing books about 
all the beautiful pictures he loved, eagerly aiming to show others 
how to see as much beauty in them as he did. Later, his interest 
in beauty advanced beyond pictures and he began writing books 
about how people could bring out more beauty in their lives by 
casting out ugly faults and more truly awaking to what is good. 
He had deeply at heart the welfare of boys and girls and while 
he was still a student at Oxford he set himself to please a little 
girl by writing the beautiful story of The King of the Golden River. 
SANDBURG, CARL (American, 1878-) 

BOY driving a milk wagon in Illinois prairie 
blizzards, working in brickyards and pot- 
teries, swinging a pitchfork beside the thresh- 
ing machine in Kansas wheatfields — that was 
Carl Sandburg. A youth working his way 
through college at Galesburg, Illinois, the 
town where he was bom, washing dishes in 
Denver hotels, shoveling coal in Omaha, 
serving as a soldier in Porto Rico. A man 
working as newspaper correspondent in Sweden during the World 
War. Carl Sandburg is still a newspaper writer but he is also 
among the most important of modem American poets. His 
work is typically modem, written in free verse, and his subjects 
are those avoided by the older poets — the city, its beauty and ugli- 
ness. In short, forceful poems he flashes vivid impressions. 

Important Works: Chicago Poems. Smoke and Steel. 

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SCOTT, SIR WALTER (Scotch, 1771-1832) 

Under the ruins of an old castle in Scotland, a 
tiny boy once played on the soft green turf among 
the lambs and dogs. This was little Walter Scott 
who had been sent down from his home in Edin- 
burgh to his grandfather’s farm at Sandyknowe that 
he might live out of doors and grow strong, for the child had been 
lame from his babyhood. From his grandmother and aunt young 
Walter heard endless ballads of Scottish history and tales of the 
Border heroes. Before he could read he learned these ballads by 
heart and would shout them out lustily, much to the discomfort 
of the minister when he came to call for he could neither speak nor 
hear above such a clamor. But the boy was a most engaging 
little fellow and all his elders delighted to tell him stories. 

Once his aunt took him to the theatre in London. The play was 
As You Like It, and it all seemed so real to Walter that when 
Orlando and Oliver fell to quarreling he cried out aloud in his 
shrill little voice, “But aren’t they brothers?” 

As soon as he was strong enough to go to school, he pursued 
his love of history and romance still further, ready to submit to 
any amount of dry work if he could only read more widely. 
Patiently he mastered both French and Italian in order to read in 
their own tongues the French and Italian romances. All his read- 
ing, however, never interfered with the boy’s sports. In spite of 
his lameness he was always a leader in frolics and “high jinks.” 
He wandered about the country, too, in search of ballads, and since 
he could not sketch the places he visited, he brought away branches 
of trees as souvenirs, eagerly planning to carve a set of chessmen — 
kings and queens from branches growing near palaces, bishops 
from those that had shaded an abbey. 

When his education was finished Scott set up as a lawyer, but 
he soon began making splendid use of his ballad lore by writing 
The Lay oj the Last Minstrel, Marmion and The Lady oj the Lake. 
Presently he found himself famous as a poet. Then he bought 

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himself a beautiful home at Abbotsford on the river Tweed, amid 
the gray hills and the heather of the border country that he loved 
so well. Scarcely had he done this when a certain swaggering 
little tailor, nick-named Rig-dum-funni-dos, whom he had placed 
at the head of a publishing house he had organized, involved him 
in immense business debts. To pay these off honorably Scott 
plunged at once into work and completed his first novel, Waverley. 
This he published without signing his name to it, and now in an 
incredibly short time he wrote novel after novel of that splendid 
Waverley series. Few even guessed that the hearty, hospitable 
country laird, keeping open house for all visitors at Abbotsford, 
living in fine old feudal fashion with baronial splendor and hos- 
pitality, was the author of these novels. Where did he ever find 
time to write them? Even the few who knew how early he rose 
to do his work, fancied he must have kept a goblin hidden away 
somewhere in attic or cellar to help him. 

In 1825, after eleven years of brilliant and prosperous labor, 
just when he believed himself free from debts, he found he had 
been involved again through his publishing business to the amount 
of 130,000 pounds. To pay off this enormous debt, he toiled in- 
cessantly for seven years more. It was a heroic struggle but in the 
end his health broke down and he died at his beloved Abbotsford. 

Important Works: Ivanhoe. W overly. The Talisman. Count Robert of Paris. Guy Manner ing. 

SELVA, SALOMON DE LA (Nicaraguan, 1893-) 

ALOMON DE LA SELVA was bom in Leon, 
Nicaragua. His family is an old one, distinguished 
in politics and literature. Among them were Indian 
chiefs and Spanish conquistadores. He studied at 
home, in Europe and the United States and has also 
lectured on poetry at Columbia University. During the World War 
he fought with the British forces. He is considered the foremost 
poet of the day in Latin America, and upon his father’s death was 
adopted as the nation’s ward by decree of the Nicaraguan Congress. 

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•SHAKESPEARE, WILLIAM (English, 1564-1616) 

Beyond Sir Hugh Clopton’s noble old stone bridge that spans 
the Avon with fourteen splendid arches rise the quaint gables and 
cathedral spire of good old Stratford town. In the days of Queen 
Elizabeth the houses were ancient plaster buildings crossed with 
timber and each had at the sides or rear a gay little garden vivid 
with color. In one of the best of those houses on Henley Street, 
lived Master Will Shakespeare, a high spirited lad, with a fine, 
courtly bearing and pleasant hazel eyes. His father, John Shakes- 
peare, was a well-to-do merchant, a trader in hides, leather-goods, 
wool, meats and goodness knows what else. He had once been 
High Bailiff or Mayor of the town. His mother, Mary Arden 
Shakespeare, was sweet and womanly, and the boy loved her 
dearly. Happy, indeed, was his merry little home circle. 

Over in the old, old grammar school, whose jutting second story 
abutted on the street, Master Will and the other Stratford ur- 
chins learned their lessons, but it was a gay and joyous life, in 
spite of lessons, that they led in Stratford town. For Warwick- 
shire in those days was divided into two well marked divisions by 
the river Avon. To the south lay the rich green pasture land of 
Feldon, stretching away to the blue line of the distant Cotswold 
hills, and dotted here and there by herds of cattle and flocks of 
snow-white sheep. Amid little clumps of protecting elms nestled 

*Read Master Skylark, a story of Shakespeare's time, by John Bennett 
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cozy homesteads, and past the well tilled fields flowed placid rivers, 
their limpid waters overhung by alders and silver willows. To the, 
north of the Avon, however — Ah! there was no cultivated land, 
but the wild, free forest of Arden, sweeping out over hill and dale for 
twenty miles, the delight of all boyish hearts. When school time 
was over, then for Will Shakespeare and the other Stratford boys 
it was Heigh and a Ho! for the Forest of Arden. O, the sweetness 
of those woodland haunts, the exhilaration and breadth and joy! 
The boys raced through leafy covert and sunny glade, past giant 
oaks and tangled thickets, now skipping from stone to stone across 
the brawling brooks, now cleaving the woodland stillness with 
their shrill young voices. Sometimes a dappled herd of deer 
would sweep away before them across an open lawn or twinkle 
through the leaves amid the shadowy bracken, while groups of 
timid rabbits fed here and there on the tender leaves. Will Shake- 
speare talked with every keeper and woodman in the forest and 
knew intimately all the ins and outs of that glorious sylvan life. 

At times, too, young Will wandered through all the picturesque 
towns and little forest villages round about, past the old gray 
castles and abbeys that loomed within their parks shut off by 
palings from the wilderness of Arden. Some of these castles had 
been abandoned and dismantled during the Wars 
of the Roses. Silent now as the surrounding for- 
est they stood, half ruined, and haunted with 
shadowy memories of lords and ladies and all the 
stately revelry that had once held sway within 
their walls. It was a country full of interest, full 
of history, full of story, full of stirring border 
legends of the days when the English stood stur- 
dily against the insurgents of Wales. Every hill 
and stream, every grim old abbey and castle had 
its heroic tale of long ago. 

On market days and fair days there was great 



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excitement in the town itself for Master Will Shakespeare, for 
Stratford was the center of a great grazing and agricultural district. 
On a bright summer’s day Will would rise with the sun and make off 
from Henley Street to watch the droves of slow oxen come crowding 
in over Clopton Bridge, and the herds of Herefordshire cows, lowing 
anxiously after their skittish young calves. Then he would follow 
the cattle to Rother Market, where the cattle dealers gathered 
about Market Cross, and observe the humors of the ploughman 
and drovers, scarcely less stolid and deliberate of movement and 
speech than their oxen. Over by the High Cross, a solid stone 
building with steps below and open arches above, the traders in 
corn and country produce held market. A gay and lively scene 
was Stratford on market day. 

Not far from Stratford lay the little forest village of Snitter- 
field, where Will’s grandfather and Uncle Henry Shakespeare had 
farms. Every boundary tree and stone, every pond and sheep- 
pool, every bam and cattleshed on the way to his Uncle Henry’s 
farm Will knew by heart, for he dearly loved the place and spent 
many a happy day there. At Snitterfield Will trotted around after 
his uncle, poking into all the byres and barns and poultry yards, 
and the man was charmed at the boy’s eager interest. Now and 
again from a safe nook on the bushy margin of a pool, he enjoyed 
the fun and excitement of the sheep washing, or watched the mys- 
teries of the sheep shearing. Then he would remain to the shear- 
ing feast and see the young maid who was chosen Queen of the 
Festival receive her rustic guests and distribute among them her 
gifts of flowers. Indeed, young Will Shakespeare’s youth was 
passed amid the labors and pastimes, the recurring festivals and 
varying round of a rural community. Each incident of the year, 
seedtime and harvest, summer and winter, brought its own group 
of picturesque merry-makings in those forest farms and villages. 

The chief holiday of all was May-day with its masques and 
morris-dances, its hobby horses making continuous merriment, and 


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its maypoles decked with gay-colored streamers and fragrant gar- 
lands. What a day it was ! In the streets of Stratford leafy screens 
and arches were erected, and everywhere were garlands of flowers, 
brought in from the forest at dawn by rejoicing youths and maid- 
ens. A spontaneous outburst of joy, a gladsome welcome to the 
re-awakening life and vernal freshness of the Spring! Sometimes, 
too, there were acted out on May-day the exploits of Robin Hood 
and Maid Marian, but it was usually at Whitsuntide, the next 
important holiday after May-day, that those exhibitions nearest to 
play-acting were given. What queer old pageants they were, fol- 
lowing the procession of trade-guilds and the usual holiday sports. 

The very oldest form of play that the people loved in England 
was the miracle or mystery play, presenting usually some tale 
from the Bible. At first, long years before Shakespeare’s time, 
these plays had been given in the churches by the clergy, then, 
gradually they had moved out to the church yard and the actors 
had changed from the clergy to citizens, members of the various 
trade guilds. Later still they were given on a cart, called the pag- 
eant cart, which was moved about from place to place, giving a 
performance wherever it stopped. They would play the story of 
Noah’s flood, or Adam and Eve, or the Destruction of Jerusalem, 
or some such subject. The lower part of the cart was draped with 
cloth which hid the wheels, and behind this screen the actors 
dressed and kept their machinery. In the Destruction of Jeru- 
salem, for example, it was necessary to keep there a quantity of 
starch to make a storm, some barrels which were rolled around to 
produce thunder, and a windlass to make an earthquake. The 
action of the play took place on the flat part of the cart, but some- 
times the actors stepped down into the street, and the lower part of 
the cart had to be used whenever they wanted to present such a 
scene as the grim and gaping jaws of Hell, whence issued devils, 
dressed in black and yellow to represent flames. Herod and Pilate, 
Cain and Judas, and certain turbaned Turks and infidels as well as 


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the Devil were favorite characters of these mysteries. The Devil 
wore black leather covered with hair and had a grotesque painted 
head, and most of the actors either wore masks or had their faces 
much painted. Vice was a constant attendant on the Devil, but he 
gradually changed into a mere buffoon or clown. In time moral- 
ity plays became even more popular than the mysteries. In the 
moralities, all manner of Vices and all manner of Virtues were por- 
trayed as persons who did battle with each other in order to gain 
possession of man's soul. It was some such performances as these 
that Will Shakespeare used to see as a boy, though in his day it 
was rather customary to draw the pageant cart up in the courtyard 
of some inn. The common people would then crowd around it, 
standing, while the richer ones paid a large fee to have seats in the 
balconies or windows of the inn that overlooked the courtyard. 

Coventry, a town near Stratford, was one of the chief centers 
for the production of miracle plays and Shakespeare must have 
gone over there sometimes to see them. Moreover, the various 
trade guilds, plasterers, tanners, armourers, hosiers, etc. who pre- 

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sented the plays were in the habit of visiting neighboring cities 
and doubtless performed in Stratford. When Will was only five 
years old, his father, then Mayor of Stratford, had especially in- 
vited the stage players to Stratford and started a series of per- 
formances in the Guild Hall. Later, the best companies in the 
kingdom used to come to Stratford, including the Earl of Leices- 
ter’s Company from London. So young Master Will had plenty 
of opportunity to study the making and presenting of plays, to 
acquire a deep love for the theatre and perhaps sometimes even to 
act himself and make friends with the players. 

But now when Will was still little more than a boy, his father 
began to have business failures and his affairs to go down, down, 
down in the world, so the lad was taken from school and put to 
work, to help out in his father’s business. John Shakespeare had 
been imprudently extravagant in his prosperity and now he simply 
lost his grip and let himself sink down under misfortune, shunning 
society and refusing to go to church or any public meeting. Sweet 
Mary Shakespeare, however, bore up nobly against their troubles, 
her spirit as calm and serene in the dark days as it had been in the 
bright. How the boy loved and admired his mother. She was to 
remain in his heart all his days as the very embodiment of every 
womanly virtue. Will sympathized 
with his parents in their troubles and 
was willing to do any kind of work to 
help them. Moreover, those very 
troubles awakened his independence 
and taught him to be scrupulously 
honorable in his own business deal- 
ings with others, a trait which he 
never forgot. An open, frank, gen- 
erous young fellow was Will Shake- 
speare in those days, innately cour- 
teous and wholly lovable. 



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When Will was only eighteen, he was often to be seen making 
off across the fields, pied with daisies, to the little hamlet of Shot- 
tery, which lay half concealed by aged elms, its cozy homesteads 
nestling amid blossoming fruit-trees and brilliant gardens. Here 
in a lovely old cottage, with a quaint thatched roof, lived Anne 
Hathaway, the daughter of a friend of Will’s father, a maid 
whom he had known all his life. In the garden and through 
the primrose lanes the two lingered often together and soon there 
was news of their wedding. Boy that he was, Will was only nine- 
teen when his first daughter, Suzanne, was born. Now what was 
there to do? He had a family on his hands to support and his 
father’s business grew every day worse and worse. Two years 
later twins were bom to him, a boy and a girl, Hamnet and Judith, 
and then an event occurred which made the young man decide 
that the only thing for him to do was to' be off to London and seek 
there his fortunes as a player, as doubtless he had long desired to 
do. He was off hunting one day with some young comrades when 
they pursued a fine deer into Fullbroke Park, or perhaps across 
the shallow ford of the river to Charlecote Park, the property of a 
sour and gloomy old Puritan, Sir Thomas Lucy, a man of aristo- 
cratic pride and narrowness who hated all youthful frolics and 
merriment. Just as they had killed the buck the youths fell in 
with one of Sir Thomas’s keepers, who insisted violently that they 
had no right to hunt where they were and accused them of deer- 
stealing. Master Will defended himself right spiritedly against 
the charge and so aroused the wrath of Sir Thomas that he com- 
plained to the Stratford authorities. They, fearing to offend so 
rich and powerful a man, doubtless let it be known to Will that he 
would better leave town for a time. Accordingly, behold young 
Will, bidding his wife and babes farewell and off for London town. 

It was about 1585 or 1587 when Will Shakespeare arrived in 
London. In those days players were just beginning to be recog- 
nized as respectable folk. Certain writers of education, such as 

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Greene and Peele and Marlowe, had been among the first to think 
the writing of plays a vocation worthy of their dignity, and were 
turning out plays vastly more like modern dramas than the old 
morality and miracle plays. Ten years before, Queen Elizabeth 
had given the Earl of Leicester’s players the first legal permit to 
act in certain places in London, and James Burbage, the leader of 
these players had built The Theatre at Shoreditch, just outside the 
boundaries of London, for mayor and common council still frowned 
on plays within the city. In building his theatre, Burbage took 
his plan from the old courtyards of the inns where it had been cus- 
tomary to draw up the pageant carts. The square yard where 
poorer people stood, became the pit of the theatre, the pageant 
cart the stage, and the windows whence the wealthier class had 
looked on, the gallery or boxes. The stage and galleries were the 
only part of the building covered, which was none too comfortable 
for people in the pit if a sudden storm came pelting down. But 
rude as this theatre was, to Burbage belongs the honor of first 
establishing theatres as a part of city life and removing from actors 
the stigma of being strolling players. 

Here at The Theatre Master Will first found occupation by 
holding the horses of the gallants who attended, and organizing a 
corps of boys to help him. But he soon advanced from that work 
to acting within the theatre, then to writing over faulty old plays, 
and at last to writing those splendid plays of his own. In a very 
short time he had surpassed all the dramatists of his day, Greene 
and Peele and Marlowe and all, and held the foremost place in the 
hearts of the play-going public. Yet with all his success he kept 
his head marvelously well, avoiding all the wild dissipations of his 
fellow-dramatists, though he loved life and mirth as well as any 
and hadn’t a trace of harshness or severity in his character. He 
worked hard, studying at French and Italian in his spare time, 
saving money for his family and making yearly visits to Stratford. 

He was first a member of the Earl of Leicester’s players which 


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later became the Lord Chamberlain's Company and the favorite 
company of the Queen. All the players in London in those days 
save for certain bands of children players were divided into two 
companies, the Lord Admiral's and the Lord Chamberlain's. The 
theatres where Shakespeare's plays were given were The Globe , 
erected outside the city, and Blackfriar’s, which was practically in 
the city. The actors played at The Globe in summer and at Black - 
friar’s in the winter. Blackfriar’s was completely roofed in and lit 
by torchlight so performances could be given there in the evening, 
but at The Globe the pit was uncovered and performances were only 
given by day. The common people had a merry time standing in 
the pit, munching apples and nuts, while the aristocrats had their 
own boxes wherein the ladies occupied the seats with the gentle- 
men reclining at their feet. If they chose, they played cards 
during the performance and there were always pages ready to 
attend upon them. Whoever paid extra could sit upon the stage 
itself. There was no scenery on that stage and a simple printed 
placard announced the name of the place where the scene was sup- 
posed to be laid. Women's parts were taken by men. It was not 

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until long after Shakespeare’s time that women appeared on the 
stage. The hoisting of a flag and blowing of a trumpet bade all 
be still to hear the play. 

What an age of awakened national life and stirring spirit was 
that of Elizabeth, when the minds of men had burst the bonds of 
the Dark Ages and were eagerly inquiring and adventuring every- 
where. Along the river side and in noble houses on the Strand 
were the hardy mariners and adventurous sea captains, Drake, 
Hawkins and Frobisher, who had driven their dauntless keels fear- 
lessly into the unknown seas of the new world, in order to push 
back the limits of man’s knowledge. The greater number of eager 
and excited listeners who crowded the rude theatres from floor to 
roof had shared the adventurous exploits of the age and all felt the 
keenest interest in life and action. So the drama of the day became 
the mirror in which all these active forces were reflected. And 
beside the Americas there was another new world which men were 
most anxious to explore in that age of awakened inquiry, the world 
of human nature, heretofore left so little questioned and under- 
stood. All the traits and impulses of that nature, good and bad, 
its high hopes and aspirations, its fears and sorrows, its bigness 
and its littleness, — there was need of a chart to point them all out. 
Into that unknown sea sailed the intrepid mariner Shakespeare 
and charted it in his mighty dramas as none other has ever done, 
the great Columbus of the newly discovered world of man’s heart 
and mind and spirit. 

For twenty years he worked actively in London, twenty long 
years, but at last a great wave of home-yearning called him back 
to the primrose lanes of Stratford. He had already bought a fine 
house there for his family and here he settled down, to spend his 
remaining years in peace and quiet, honored and loved by all. No 
other man ever knew the hearts of men and women as Shakespeare 
did. He still remains the greatest dramatist of all ages and all races 
who wrote “not for an age but for all time”. 

Read Tales from Shakespeare by Charles and Mary Lamb 

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SHELLEY, PERCY BYSSHE (English, 1792-1822) 

ERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY was the son of a stub- 
born, old, English baronet, Sir Timothy Shelley, who 
was tyrannical and harsh in his own home and yet 
observed ceremoniously all the outward forms of reli- 
gion. The boy had a beautiful, gifted mother, but 
his father's character made him early learn to hate oppression and 
a religion that was all show and no spirit. At school he was a shy 
boy, persecuted and made fun of by his fellows, and this still 
further strengthened his hatred of oppression. At seventeen he 
was expelled from Oxford for writing a pamphlet concerning reli- 
gion. His father then angrily forbade him the house and he made 
the sad mistake of marrying a young girl of sixteen, Harriet 
Westbrook, a school friend of his sister's, who appealed to his sense 
of chivalry and made him believe that she was ill-used at home. 
Young Shelley had a perfect passion for justice and freedom, down- 
right sincerity and truth, and he longed to establish an ideal state 
of love and brotherhood. At nineteen the fiery youth set off to 
redress the wrongs of Ireland. A little later, he wrote several 
revolutionary pamphlets in England which he sent to sea in bottles 
and boxes for winds and waves to circulate. These made it neces- 
sary for him to flee for a time into Wales. When he was twenty 
one, he separated from his young wife and went to France and 
Italy where he spent the rest of his life with Mary Godwin Shelley, 
his second wife. He was a great friend of Byron and Keats and 
one of England's foremost poets. At thirty he was drowned while 
sailing on the Mediterranean. 

SHEPARD, ODELL (American poet and literary critic, 1884-) 
SOUTHEY, ROBERT (English, 1774-1843) 

Poet of the Lake District. Friend of Wordsworth and Coleridge. 
SPENSER, EDMUND (English, 1552-1599) 

One of the supremely great poets of Queen Elizabeth's period. 
SPYRI, JOHANNA (Swiss writer of children's stories, 1829-) 

Cornelli Heidi. Moni, the Goat Boy. Rico and Wiseli. 

162 



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STEDMAN, EDMUND CLARENCE(American critic, 1833-1908) 
STEVENSON, ROBERT LOUIS (Scotch, 1850-1894) 

OBERT LOUIS STEVENSON was bom 
in Edinburgh. He was the son of a noted 
engineer who had the interesting task of 
planning and building great light-houses 
that flashed out their signal lights all along 
the Scottish coast. The boy’s father in- 
tended him likewise for an engineer, but 
Robert was scarcely strong enough for such 
a life, so he studied to be a lawyer. When 
he was a young man he once went off with his canoe to paddle 
through the canals and rivers, the quaint, trim villages and pleasant 
fields of Belgium and France. He followed this with a walking trip 
through the rich beauties of Southern France, having as his only 
companion a particularly stubborn donkey. When he returned to 
England he wrote so delightfully of these journeys, An Inland 
Voyage, and Travels With A Donkey, that his friends began to urge 
him to give up other work and do nothing but write. 

A year or so later, Stevenson heard that the young lady whom 
he was to marry, a Mrs. Osbourne, was ill in California, so he 
set out to join her. Travel was expensive and he had little 
money, so what did he do but go as a steerage passenger on the 
boat among all the hodge-podge of immigrants — queer characters, 
jabbering the strange tongues of half the countries of Europe. 
Then he crossed the American continent on an immigrant train. 
In San Francisco he married Mrs. Osbourne and after some months 
in a desolate mining camp, he returned with her and his little 
stepson to Scotland. Stevenson had never been strong or well, 
though he was the cheeriest man imaginable and never let ill 
health keep him from work. In the years following his marriage 
he wandered about with his family into all sorts of curious places, 
seeking a spot where he could live more comfortably. At last he 

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settled down on one of the Samoan Islands, a tropical paradise 
amid the soft blue waters of the South Seas. Here he had a beau- 
tiful place called Vailima at the foot of a lofty mountain. How 
truly he enjoyed making acquaintance with the simple, hospitable, 
brown-skinned natives. He acquired great influence in their 
affairs and used to sit in state at their councils. 

In spite of his physical weakness, Stevenson was ever at work, 
writing, writing, and his heart was so full of keen boyish love of 
adventure that he left boys and girls such stories as no man has 
ever surpassed. In 1894 he died at Vailima as courageously and 
cheerily as he had lived, and his body was borne by sixty natives 
up Mt. Vaea to rest in a beautiful spot above his home. 

Treasure Island. Kidnapped. The Master of Ballantrae. Child' s Garden of Verse. 

STOCKTON, FRANCIS R. (American novelist, 1834-1902) 

Important Works: The Bee Man of Orn. Fanciful Tales. The Adventures of Captain Horn. 

STOWE, HARRIET BEECHER (American, 1811-1896) 

Mrs. Stowe is best known as the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. 
SWINBURNE, ALGERNON C. (English poet, 1837-1909) 

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THE LATCH KEY 

TAGORE, RABINDRANATH (East Indian, 1861-) 

jORE was bom in Calcutta. Very early he 
lost his mother, and his regret colors all his 
poems of mother and child love. He was a lonely 
little fellow for his father was often away from 
home. Nature, the clouds in the sky, the flowers, 
the leaves, were his beloved companions. A 
harsh master made his school days very unhappy, 
so he ran away. Then his father gave him pri- 
vate tutors and took him to the Himalayas where 
he studied and began to write songs and stories. 
At twenty-three he married and was sent to manage his father’s 
estates on the Ganges. He went unwillingly at first, but soon he 
realized with deep satisfaction the joy of coming so closely in touch 
with his people. Here he wrote many of his best plays. When he 
was forty he lost his wife, his daughter and his young son. In his 
sorrow and restlessness he started a boy’s school which he aimed 
to make a model place where boys could be educated with all the 
freedom and self government possible. Tagore is one of the great- 
est East Indian thinkers. 

TAYLOR, BAYARD (American writer and traveler, 1825-78) 
TAYLOR, JANE (English children’s poet, 1783-1824) 
TENNYSON, ALFRED, LORD (English, 1809-1892) 

Alfred Tennyson’s father was the rector of Somersby and the 
boy lived in a quiet, pleasant home where there was plenty of 
time for reading and reflection. He was always the story-teller 
for his brothers and sisters, and his favorite game was to write 
endless romances which he slipped under the dishes at table to 
be read when the business of eating was over. When he was only 
eighteen he and his brother Charles published a volume of verse 
called. Poems by Two Brothers. From then on, Alfred slowly rose, 
struggling often against poverty, to be Poet Laureate and the best 
loved poet in England. 

Idylls of the King. The Princess. Tennyson for the Young by Ainger . ' 

165 



MY BOOK HOUSE 

THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE (English, 18U-1863) 
Thackeray was born in Calcutta. His father died when he 
was a tiny boy and his mother married again. His step-father 
was a kindly gentleman very like the dear old Colonel Newcome 
in one of Thackeray’s stories. While his mother and stepfather 
stayed in India, William was sent to England to be educated. 
He was not happy at school, for the boys were rough while he was 
gentle, and he was not overly clever at lessons or games. As a 
young man, Thackeray studied drawing in Paris, but he could not 
support himself by drawing, so he began to write. The Book oj 
Snobs, published in Punch, brought him great success. Unfortun- 
ately Thackeray’s young wife had become insane and his two 
little daughters were henceforth his constant companions. In his 
novels, which are accurate pictures of the life of his time, he holds 
up to sharp ridicule the snobbery he detested. He has written one 
book for children, the deliciously funny Rose and the Ring. 
THAXTER, CELIA (American, 1836-1894) 

Bom in Portsmouth, N. H. Lived at the Isles of Shoals. 
THOMPSON SETON, ERNEST (English, I860-) 

A well known writer of tme animal stories. He was bom in 
England but lived in Canada and on the western plains in boyhood. 

Wild Animals I Have Known. Biography oj a Grizzly. Lives of the Hunted. 

THORNE-THOMSEN, GUDRUN (Contemporary) 

One of the most satisfactory editors of Norse Tales for children. 

Important Works: East ’0 the Sun and West * 0 the Moon. The Birch and the Star. 

TOLSTOY, LYOF N. (Russian, 1828-1910) 

At Yasnaya Polyana, which means “bright glade”, lived young 
Lyof Tolstoy, a sensitive, plain-appearing little fellow of strong 
affections who loved games, and horses, and dogs, and country 
life. Bright Glade was a pretty place, a large wooden house sur- 
rounded by woods and avenues of lime trees, with a river and 
four lakes on the estate. Lyof’s father and mother died when he 
was small and he was brought up by his aunt, Tatiana, whom he 
166 


LATCH KEY 


THE 

loved very dearly. She used to 
welcome all sorts of queer pil- 
grims to Bright Glade, beggars 
and monks and poor despised 
wanderers, so the boy’s life was 
always simple and unworldly. 

One day Lyof’s brother, Nich- 
olas, invented a game called “ant 
brothers.” He bade Lyof and 
the other two brothers crawl 
under two armchairs, hide themselves from view with handker- 
chiefs and boxes, and cling lovingly together in the dark. Then 
he told them that he possessed a secret, which, when it was known, 
would make all men happy. There would be no more disease, no 
trouble, and no one would be angry with anyone else. All would 
love one another and become “ant brothers.” This secret he 
said he had written on a green stick and buried by the road at the 
edge of a certain ravine. The boys played the game often, but the 
great secret was never revealed to them. Nevertheless, that se- 
cret, the way for men to cease from suffering, to leave off quarrel- 
ing and be always happy, was what Lyof sought all his life. 

At Bright Glade Tolstoy lived with a wife and thirteen jolly 
children, writing books and joining in all the family sports. But 
more and more he came to hate the idle, frivolous, useless life of 
the rich, the injustice of governments and society which gave so 
much to the rich and so little to the poor, the jealousies and 
selfishness that made war among men, and finally he gave up 
everything else that he might devote himself to making happier 
lives for the poor serfs who labored on his estates. He tried to 
get back to the pure Christianity that Jesus taught, to lead a 
life of simplicity and work, of love and brotherhood. And so he 
lived among his peasants, sharing the hardest manual labor and 
dressing just as they did, a smock in summer, a sheepskin coat 

167 



MY BOOK HOUSE 

and cap in winter. The tyrannical Russian government of those 
days frowned darkly on his views, but more and more men looked 
to him as a great leader, thinker and teacher. When he was over 
seventy Tolstoy wrote, “The ideal of ‘ant brothers’, lovingly cling- 
ing to one another, though not under two arm chairs curtained by 
handkerchiefs, but of all mankind under the wide dome of heaven, 
has remained the same for me. As I then believed that there ex- 
isted a little green stick whereon was written the message that 
could destroy all evil in men and give them universal welfare, so I 
now believe that such truth exists and will be revealed to men and 
will give them all it promises.’’ 

Important works: Gospel Stories. Twenty Three Tales. In Pursuit of Happiness. 

TOPELIUS, ZACHARIAS (Finnish poet and novelist, 1818-’98) 
TROWBRIDGE, JOHN TOWNSEND (Am. novelist, 1827-1916) 
VAN DYKE, HENRY (American clergyman and writer, 1852-) 

Important Works: The First Christmas Tree. The Blue Flower. The Story of the Other Wise Man. 

WARNER, CHARLES DUDLEY (American editor, 1829-1900) 
WATTS, ISAAC (English hymn writer and preacher, 1674-1748) 
WHITE, STEWARD EDWARD (American novelist, 1873-) 

Adventures of Bobby Orde. The Magic Forest. Gold ( California in 1849.) 

WHITTIER, JOHN GREENLEAF (American poet, 1807-1892) 
Whittier was born in Haverhill, Mass., of a hard-working 
Quaker family. As a small boy he wrote poetry which he hid 
from everyone but his older sister. One day the postman tossed 
him a newspaper and what should he see but one of his own verses 
in print. His sister had sent it in, and from now on he contrib- 
uted regularly to the paper. Soon the editor, William Lloyd 
Garrison, grew interested in him, sought him out, and urged him 
to educate himself. So the boy earned his tuition at Haverhill 
Academy by making slippers at eight cents apiece. He grew up 
to be the great poet of the anti-Slavery movement. His office was 
burned and he was mobbed for his views, but he continued to 
write poems full of rugged strength and deep religious feeling. 
WILDE, OSCAR (English dramatist and novelist, 1856-1900) 

Important Works: The Happy Prince and Other Stories. 

1 68 


THE LATCH KEY 

WILSON, WOODROW (American, 185S-) 

Woodrow Wilson was born in Virginia, brought up and edu- 
cated in Georgia and South Carolina. As President of Princeton 
University, as Governor of New Jersey and as President of the 
United States, (1912-1920) he instituted great reforms always 
along the lines of more truly democratic ideals. During the 
World War it was he who first made plain to the world that what 
the allies were really fighting to protect and uphold was the 
principle of democratic government. It was also he who sought 
to work toward a lasting foundation for peace by urging persistent- 
ly on the world the League of Nations. 

WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM (English poet, 1770-1850) 
Young William Wordsworth loved to ramble high up into the 
hills near his home, beside the lakes and sounding cataracts, until 
all Nature came to life, and flowers and mists and winds found 
voice and spoke to him. They told him he was one with all that 
overflowing Soul that lives throughout the universe, and in his 
joy it seemed to him that he “saw blessings spread around him 
like a sea.” So the boy grew up pure in heart and content with 
modest pleasures. All his life long he loved to tramp and often 
his sister Dorothy was his comrade. With all his worldly goods 
done up in a handkerchief, he tramped through France in the 
early days of the French Revolution; he walked through England, 
Scotland, Wales and many parts of Europe. At last he settled 
down with Dorothy at Grasmere in the beautiful Lake Country, 
to seek in solitude a deeper understanding of the universe and to 
express in poetry all the songs that Nature sang to his inmost 
heart. Here, likewise, he married and found a warm friend in the 
poet, Coleridge, who lived near by. But while Coleridge aimed 
to make the weird and supernatural seem real in his poetry, 
Wordsworth aimed with deep simplicity to write of the common- 
place, and to find in the humblest lives nobility and strength. 
YONGE, CHARLOTTE (English novelist, 1823-1901) 
ZANGWILL, ISRAEL (A great Jewish writer of England, 1864- ) 

169 


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THE INTERESTING HISTORY OF OLD MOTHER GOOSE 

The most remarkable dame in all history who was born gray- 
headed and yet never grows old, who perennially keeps her charm, 
who is ever, forever, calling out the spirit of childhood in the human 
heart to go gamboling with her over the green, turning somersaults, 
kicking up its heels, and yet learning, too, at her knee from her 
quaint store of sage and precious nonsense, is that beloved old 
creature, Old Mother Goose. Who she was, and how she was, and 
why she was, who knows? Her personality remains enshrouded in 
the most delightful mystery. But for myself I believe she has dwelt 
forever in the human heart. Her rhymes and jingles are nothing 
more nor less than the spontaneous bubblings of the eternal spirit 
of childhood, that delicious, joyous, nonsensical wisdom which is 
foolishness only to men. 

The rhymes and jingles of Old Mother Goose are a gradual 
growth like the old folk tales, composed at no one time by no one 
individual, but springing up all down through the ages, who knows 
how? — naturally, spontaneously, joyously, like the droll little Jack- 
in-the-Pulpits and Dutchmen’s-Breeches of the woodland. They 
need no other claim to a reason for being than the pure joy of 
expressing that bubbling spirit (albeit sometimes by means of well 
nigh meaningless words) and the everlasting delight of man in 
rhyme and rhythm and musical arrangement of sounds. What 


170 


THE LATCH KEY 

other excuse for existence, save its beautiful arrangement of s’s, 
is needed by that immortal line — “Sing a Song of Sixpence!” — 

There have been many interesting theories as to the origin of 
the name Mother Goose. But the one most stoutly maintained was 
advanced in the quaint little volume published at Boston in the 
year 1833 by the firm of Munroe and Frances, under the title, 
“The Only True Mother Goose, without addition or abridgment, 
embracing also a reliable Life of the Goose Family never before 
published.” 

According to this story a certain Thomas Fleet, bom in Eng- 
land, and brought up in a printing office in the city of Bristol, 
came to Boston in the year 1712, when that city was little more 
than an over-grown village, with its narrow, crooked streets still 
bespeaking the cow-paths from which they sprang. Here Thomas 
Fleet established a printing office in that street of the delectable 
name, Pudding Lane, where he published small books, pamphlets 
and such matter as came to his hands. It was not long before he 
became acquainted with a well-to-do family of the name of Goose, 
and he grew exceedingly fond of the pretty young daughter, 
Elizabeth Goose. Under the date June 8, 1715, there appears 
in the record of marriages still preserved in the historic old town 
hall of Boston, an entry recording the wedding by the famous 
Reverend Cotton Mather, of Thomas Fleet, “now residing in 
Pudding Lane of this city, to Elizabeth Goose.” 

The happy couple took up their residence in the same quaint 
little house with the small paned windows where the printing 
office was situated in Pudding Lane, and Elizabeth’s mother, Old 
Mother Goose, went to live with them. Here various children 
were bom to the Fleets, and Old Mother Goose, being a most 
devoted grandmother, was so over-joyed that she spent the greater 
part of her time in the nursery, pouring out to the little ones the 
songs and ditties which she had learned in her childhood. 

The industrious father Fleet, having these ditties constantly 
171 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

dinned into his ears, shrewdly conceived the idea of turning the 
discomfort thus caused him to some good account by collecting 
the songs and publishing them. This he did under the title, 
Songs for the Nursery or Mother Goose’s Melodies, and he sold the 
same from the Pudding Lane shop for the price of two coppers 
apiece. The story further goes on to relate how a goose with a 
very long neck and a wide open mouth flew across the title page 
of the book; and Munroe and Frances solemnly announced that 
they had merely reprinted these wonderful original verses. 

This interesting, picturesque, and delightful tale may or may 
not be true. Certainly the grave of Old Mother Goose remains 
to this very day carefully marked in one of Boston’s old church- 
yards, where it is visited by many devoted pilgrims each year, 
but unfortunately, no scrap of the original book has ever been 
found to corroborate the claim of Messrs. Munroe and Frances. 
Moreover, whether the tale be true or not, it still in no way explains 
the origin of the name Mother Goose. For in the very childhood 
of Thomas Fleet, more than twenty years before his supposed 
publication of Mother Goose’s Melodies, there appeared in France 
a little prose collection of the best known fairy tales, Cinderella, 
Little Red Riding Hood, Toads and Diamonds, Bluebeard, Sleep- 
ing Beauty, etc. These were written by a most distinguished French 
writer, Charles Perrault, were published in Paris in the year 1697, 
and were called Contes de ma Mere, I’Oye, or, Tales of My Mother, 
the Goose. On the frontispiece of his book is an old woman spinning 
and telling tales to a man, a girl, a boy and a cat. It is not even 
known whether Perrault originated the name Mother Goose, for 
it is said, that long before his time even, the goose had been given 
the reputation of story telling. Instead of saying of stories the 
origin of which they did not care to disclose, “A little bird told me !” 
people used to say, “Oh, a goose told me!” And so, after all, 
perhaps even the name Mother Goose belongs to the people and 
not to any one individual. 


172 


the latch key 

These tales of Perrault’s, however, were all in prose while it 
is through her rhymes and jingles that Mother Goose has won 
her best-deserved fame. The first known collection of rhymes 
under her name was published in London about 1765, having 
been gathered together by John Newbery, the famous publisher 
of St. Paul’s Churchyard, and the first publisher in the world to 
give special attention to children’s books. It was he who pub- 
lished Little Goody Two-shoes, the story generally attributed to 
the great and lovable Irish author, Oliver Goldsmith, the prime 
friend of children, and undoubtedly it was Goldsmith who edited 
the Mother Goose Melodies for Newbery. In Welsh’s Life of 
Goldsmith we are told that Goldsmith taught a certain little maid 
“Jack and Jill by two bits of paper on his fingers,” and that after 
the successful production of his play The Good-natured Man, Mr. 
Goldsmith was so overjoyed that he sang lustily for his friends his 
favorite song, “about an old woman tossed in a blanket seventeen 
times as high as the moon.” 

In 1785 Newbery’s edition of Mother Goose was reprinted in 
Worcester, Massachusetts, by Isaiah Thomas, who had married 
one of the grand-daughters of Thomas Fleet, and a great-grand 
daughter of old Dame Goose. A very beautiful copy of this book 
is to be found in the Boston Library and, since the story of Thomas 
Fleet’s edition cannot be proved, John Newbery must be accepted 
as the first publisher, and Isaiah Thomas as the first American 
publisher, of our best beloved nursery classic. 

Some twenty years after the Thomas edition, another collection 
of nursery rhymes appeared, called Gammer Gurton’s Garland, 
which contained all of the Mother Goose Melodies and a great 
many more besides, but much of this material was taken from old 
jest books, and was worthless and coarse, and Gammer Gurton’s 
Garland never attained the popularity of Mother Goose. 

In 1842, James Halliwell, a man of fine scholarship, made a 
careful study of the nursery rhymes of England, collected prin- 


173 


MY BOOK HOUSE 


cipally from oral tradition. He writes that these nonsense scraps 
“have come down in England to us in such numbers that in the 
short space of three years the author has collected considerably 
more than a thousand/' Besides Halliwell, many other men of 
the highest literary ability have edited Mother Goose. 

It is intensely interesting to know how very old some of our 
best known rhymes are. In the preface to the Newbery edition, 
the writer, probably Oliver Goldsmith, says, “The custom of 
singing these songs and lullabies to children is of very great 
antiquity. It is even as old as the time of the ancient Druids. 
Charactacus, King of the Britons, was rocked in his cradle in the 
Isle of Mona, now called Anglesea, and tuned to sleep by some of 
these soporiferous sonnets," Old King Cole was certainly an 
ancient Celtic king of about the third century A. D., an original 
Briton, who lived even before the Angles and Saxons had come to 
conquer England. Dim and far away seem those days in the 
dawn of English history, when the Druids still held sway with 
the dark mysteries of their religion in the dusky oak forests of 
England, but the whole flashes suddenly into light and life when 
we realize that those were the very days when 


Old King Cole 

Was a merry old soul 
And a merry old soul was he; 

Old King Cole 
He sat in his hole , 

And called for his fiddlers three . 

And every fiddler , he had a fine fiddle , 

And a very fine fiddle had he , 

“ Tweedledee , tweedledee,” said the fiddlers three. 



174 


THE LATCH KEY 


Little Jack Horner, too, is probably early Celtic and was 
originally a long poem, containing the Pleasant History of all 
Jack Horner’s Witty Pranks, of which the sticking of his thumb 
in the Christmas pie formed only an insignificant part. 

Mother, May I Go Out to Swim? is fourteen hundred years 
old and comes from a jest book of the sixth century. Only to 
think that at the same time when minstrels were singing with 
wondrous dignity to courtly listeners in the great halls of the 
castles, the sonorous and heroic lines of the Beowulf, children in 
the nursery were snickering and giggling, just as we do today, 
over the ridiculous jingle, 



Mother, may I go out to swim? 

Yes, my darling daughter. 

Hang your clothes on a hickory limb, 
But don’t go near the water! 


And for every one man of this present time who knows the 
classic Beowulf, there are at least five hundred who know the jingle! 

I Had a Little Husband No Bigger Than My Thumb is prob- 
ably a part of Tom Thumb’s History and is supposed to have 
originated in the tenth century from a little Danish work treating 
of “Swain Tomling, a man no bigger than a thumb, who would 
be married to a woman three ells and three quarters long.’’ 

Humpty Dumpty dates back to the days of King John in the 
thirteenth century. When that tyrannical gentleman was quar- 
reling with his barons and they were forcing him to grant them 
the Great Charter of England, Humpty Dumpty had already 
begun his immortal escapade of falling off the wall, and if one 
were to inquire which had won the more enduring fame by his 
exploits, the answer would necessarily be, that granting the 
foundation for all the liberties of England, could never place King 
John in the same rank with that prime entertainer of infancy, 
who will apparently be performing his antics unto all generations. 

The rhyme of the old woman who was tossed up in a blanket 
was old in the days of Henry V, in the early fifteenth century. 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

When that strong-handed monarch set out with a mere handful 
of men to conquer France, the faction opposed to him in his own 
country, used to sing the rhyme to ridicule him and show the 
folly and impossibility of his undertaking, representing the King 
as an old woman engaged in a pursuit the most absurd and extrav- 
agant possible. But when King Henry routed the whole French 
army at Agincourt, taking their king and the flower of their 
nobility prisoners, and made himself master of France in spite of 
his mere handful of men, the very people who had ridiculed him 
began to change their minds and think no task too difficult for him. 
They therefore cancelled the former sonnet and sang this one: 

So vast is the prowess of Harry the Great, 

He’ll pluck a hair from the pale faced moon; 

Or a lion familiarly take by the tooth, 

And lead him about as you lead a baboon. 

All princes and potentates under the sun, 

Through fear into corners and holes away run; 

While no danger nor dread his swift progress retards, 
For he deals with kingdoms as we do our cards! 

The Queen whom Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat, made the famous 
expedition to London to see, appears to have been Queen Elizabeth, 
though why Pussy Cat, Pussy Cat reported nothing more inter- 
esting at court than frightening a little mouse under a chair, when 
she might have held forth on the subject of Queen Elizabeth in 
all the glory of her satins and jewels, and stomachers, and puffs, 
and ruffs, and coifs, remains a secret known only to Pussy. 

Simple Simon comes also from a chap-book of the Elizabethan 
era. These chap-books were small volumes carried about from 
place to place for sale by itinerant merchants or chap-men. It 
was from such books that a great number of the old rhymes came. 

Sing a Song of Sixpence was well known in Shakespeare’s time. 

The unfortunate Hector Protector who was dressed all in 
green and met with such disfavor at the hands of the King as well 
as the Queen, was that doughty old Puritan, Oliver Cromwell, 
Lord High Protector of England, familiarly called Old Noll, who 

176 



THE LATCH KEY 

ousted Charles I from his throne and could scarcely be expected, 
henceforth, to be any too graciously dealt with by kings and 
queens. 

From all this account which might be lengthened still further, 
it appears that Old Mother Goose is no mere modern upstart, but 
belongs to the pedigreed aristocracy of literature and must be 
treated with becoming consideration and respect. Nevertheless, 
it cannot be denied that, beside all the precious pearls of pure 
and joyous nonsense which Mother Goose has given us, she has 
perpetrated certain unworthy pranks in the form of coarse and 
vulgar rhymes, for which she needs to be given some broth without 
any bread, whipped very soundly and sent off to bed. In other 
words, from the very nature of the old jest books from which 
much of Mother Goose was taken, too many collections contain 
objectionable rhymes, and the need for a far more careful selection 
than is ordinarily made for children’s reading begins with these 
first rhymes, which are to be given to the very littlest tots and 
cannot for that very reason be too carefully culled. 

The selections in J\ My BOOK HOUSE 

have been chosen for their music, 

their melody, their /W ipr rhythm, their joyous 

nonsense, and quaint humor, their vivid 

flash of quickly mov- in S pictures. The 

vulgarities, crudities, and twisted ethics 

have all been swept I!/., uncompromisingly 

into a dark closet i \ \f, \\\\M and left there. 

So, from theilyvk \ f pages of My BOOK 

HOUSE, behold Old ^ kf Mother Goose put- 
ting her very best U foot forward, invit- 

ing you all with a curtsy, whatever the birth records may say 
about your age, to get your pipes and come skipping in her train, 
out where the meadows are always green, where lambs and children 
are always young, and the sun is ever shining. 

i77 


MY BOOK HOUSE 



THE ORIGIN OF THE FOLK TALES 
From the very dawn of human history, men and women have 
loved to gather together in hut or castle, around the blazing 
camp-fire of the savage, or the homey hearth of civilization, and 
tell stories. Thus have arisen among all nations and peoples col- 
lections of tales peculiar to each particular folk, breathing the 
very spirit of their individuality and handed down orally from 
parents to children through generation after generation. These 
are the folk tales, which, at their best, in their vigor and simpli- 
city, their vividness and beauty of imagery, the unaffected depth 
of their pathos and the irresistible drollery of their humor, form 
the largest and best part of children’s reading, the characteristics 
that found their expression in the childhood of the human race, 
maintaining an eternal appeal to childhood all down through the 
ages. Our best known stories, Cinderella, Jack and the Bean- 
stalk, Sleeping Beauty and many others are folk tales. 

Although there had long ago been scattered collections of these 
tales, such as the wonderful Arabian Nights, from the Arabian 
and Persian and other oriental sources, first brought to the notice 
of Europe in the eighteenth century, and the collection of Charles 
Perrault made from the French in 1697, it was during the nine- 
teenth century that men began to be especially interested in col- 

178 



THE LATCH KEY 

lecting these stories, taking them down carefully from the mouths 
of natives, and from them studying the customs and habits of 
thought, even the history of the various peoples. Most notable 
among these collections are those made by the Grimm Brothers 
in Germany, and Asbjornsen and Moe from the Norse. We 
have collections of folk tales, however, not only from the Ger- 
man and Norse, the French and English, but likewise from the 
Gaelic, Welsh, Spanish, Scotch, Finnish, Italian, even from the 
Zulus and other African tribes, American Indians and Austra- 
lian Bushmen. In fact we have collections from nearly every 
nation under the sun and most of the savage tribes besides. 

From a careful study of these collections certain very inter- 
esting facts appear. In the first place, in every Aryan country, 
that is every country inhabited by the white race, even those 
separated by the widest stretches of land and sea, the incidents, 
plots and characters of the tales are the very same, a few incidents 
common to all being put together in an endless variety of different 
combinations. How has it possibly come about that peoples so 
far apart, so long separated by space, so widely different in lan- 
guage and customs, as the Germans and the Hindoos for example, 
possess the same household tales? Everywhere among the Aryans 
we find legends of the ill-treated but ultimately successful younger 
daughter, of which Cinderella is a type. Almost every nation 
has some version of the Cinderella story. Cinderella herself is 
French, coming to us from the collection of Perrault. The real 
English version is the story of Catskin. In German Cinderella is 
Aschen-puttel ; in Italian she is Cenerentola. Likewise she appears 
in Norwegian, Russian, Hungarian, Servian, Irish and among the 
tales of any number of other folk beside. 

As wide spread as the story of the victorious younger daughter, 
is the story of the victorious younger son. He is always despised 
by his elder brothers, and yet succeeds at various difficult tasks 
where the elders fail. Such stories are Boots and His Brothers, 


179 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

from the Norse, The Flying Ship, from the Russian, The Golden 
Bird, from the German, Through the Mouse Hole, from the Czech. 

Again, everywhere are stories of the wife or daughter of some 
powerful and evil creature, a giant, a sea-serpent, a beast, a 
monster, who runs away with the hero to escape from the monster. 
The monster pursues and the fugitives delay him by throwing 
something behind them, a comb that turns into a forest, the 
branch of a tree that becomes a river and so on. Everywhere, 
too, are stories of men that have been turned into beasts by a 
charm and are rescued by the faithfulness and devotion of some 
maiden. Such are Beauty and the Beast from the French, East 
O’ the Sun and West O’ the Moon from the Norse, Snow-white 
and Rose-Red from the German, etc. Beasts, birds and fishes 
are capable of speech, as the Fox in the Golden Bird, the flounder 
in The Fisherman and His Wife. Even rocks and trees and other 
inanimate objects are capable of speech, as in Boots and His 
Brothers, and in all is the element of magic, resistance always 
giving way to the spell of certain rhymes or incantations. 

It is scarcely possible to suppose that the similarity of these 
stories among so many different peoples can be explained by 
conscious borrowing, that the Scotch Highlanders for example 
read Russian tales or traveled into Russia and so copied Russian 
stories, since the common people, the peasants, who are the 
guardians of the ancient store of legends in every land, read little 
and travel less. More likely it is that long, long ago in the dim 
beginnings of history, when the Aryan race still lived as a single 
people, they already possessed many of these stories, and when 
they scattered from their original seat to people lands as far dis- 
tant from each other as Ceylon and Iceland, they bore with them 
the germ at least of many of their household tales. Very possible 
it is too, according to Mr. Andrew Lang, that far back in the 
unrecorded wanderings of man, these stories may have drifted 
from race to race. In his introduction to Grimm's Household 


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Tales, Mr. Lang says, “In the shadowy distance of primitive 
commerce, amber and jade and slaves were carried half across 
the world by the old trade routes. It is said that oriental jade 
is found in Swiss lake-dwellings, that an African trade cowry 
(shell-money) has been discovered deep in a Cornish barrow. 
Folk tales might well be scattered abroad in the same manner by 
merchantmen gossiping over their Khan-fires, by Sidonian mariners 
chatting in the sounding loggia of an Homeric house, by the slave 
dragged from his home and passed from owner to owner across 
Africa or Europe, by the wife who according to primitive law had 
to be chosen from an alien clan.” 

Much of the similarity in household tales may be due to both 
these explanations, the common origin of the Aryan race and the 
unrecorded driftings of commerce, yet neither one entirely explains 
the matter, since many non-Aryan races possess the same tales 
and there is much similarity to the European tales in tales of 
races that have been utterly shut off from communication with 
the rest of the world, the Peruvians and the Aztecs in Mexico 
for example. Even the Cinderella story is not peculiar to the 
Aryan race. The first known version of it is the Egyptian story of 
Rhodopis and the Little Gilded Sandals. 

The tale of the weak creature who runs away from a powerful 
and malevolent being, casting impediments behind to delay the 
pursuit of the monster, so common in European tales, is also 
particularly wide-spread in many non-Aryan countries. Among 
the Eskimos a girl marries a whale. To visit her, 
her two brothers build a boat of magical speed. 
In their company the girl flees from the whale. 
The whale discovers her flight and gives chase but 
is detained by various objects which she throws at 
him, until at last she and her brothers escape and 
the whale is transformed into a piece of whale- 
bone. In a Samoyed tale, two girls are fleeing 
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from a cannibal step-mother. They throw first a comb behind 
them, as the mother is almost upon them, and that becomes a 
forest; other small objects become rivers and mountains. The 
same kind of feats are performed during flight in a story from 
Madagascar, and one from the Zulus. A Hottentot story tells of 
a woman’s flight from an elephant. In Japan, the hero, followed 
by the Loathly Lady of Hades, throws down his comb and it 
turns into bamboo sprouts which check her approach. 

The most probable explanation of the similarity in various folk 
tales that could not possibly be explained by transmission or a 
common origin, seems to be that this is due to the similarity of 
primitive man’s imagination and intellect everywhere, no matter 
how separated by material barriers. Savages the world over, 
past and present, although utterly cut off from all association with 
each other, have invariably shared certain views of life. For one 
thing they draw no hard and fast line between themselves and 
the animal or inanimate world about them. To the simple mind 
of the savage, all things appear to live, to be capable of conscious 
movement and even of speech. The sun, the moon, the stars, 
the very ground on which he walks, the clouds, storms and light- 
ning are all to him living, conscious beings. Animals have 
miraculous power and are supposed to be able to protect him as 
illustrated by the totems of the Alaskan Indians. Moreover, 
the savage believes infallibly in magic. Everywhere we find 
Australians, Maoris, Eskimos, old Irish, Fuegians, Brazilians, 
Samoyeds, Iroquois and the rest showing faith in certain jugglers 
or wizards of their tribes. They believe that these men can turn 
themselves or their neighbors into animal shapes, that they can 
move inanimate objects by incantations and perform all the 
other rigamarole of magic. 

It is most likely therefore that the remarkable similarities 
in the various folk tales are chiefly due to the identity of early 
fancy everywhere. They originated undoubtedly while the races 

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were still uncivilized, and the unprogressive 
in each race preserved the old tale, while it 
is probable that those who forged ahead in- 
tellectually and acquired culture began to 
polish and perfect these old tales until they 
grew gradually into the myths that became 
the religions of the peoples. 

Some of these old folk-tales, as has been 
contended, doubtless were told to explain 
natural phenomena, why the sun rose and 
set, how the thunder-storm came, what produced the lightning, 
but they were not by any manner of means all designed to do 
this, as some students of folk-lore have insisted, explaining Little 
Red Riding Hood and nearly every other nursery tale as a 
sun myth. Those that were an attempt at such explanation 
usually frankly declare themselves to be so. For instance the 
myth of the man who caught the sun and anchored it to the 
earth is a savage attempt to explain why the sun pursues a regular 
course through the sky, instead of going hither and yon at will, 
and is found not only in the Hawaiian, but among American 
Indians and New Zealanders as well. 

The folk tales were rather as a whole a natural expression of 
primitive man’s imagination and intellect, his views of life, his 
aims and interests, without particular purpose or meaning. 
Gradually as his life became better ordered and richer in ex- 
perience, his intellect keener and clearer, his spirit more refined, 
certain simple moral conceptions began to creep into his tales. 
Thus men the world over in lands far, far apart began to express 
a natural love of good temper and courtesy by tales of the good 
boy or girl who succeeded in enterprises where the bad boy or 
girl, as a punishment for churlishness or disobedience, had failed. 
Such stories are The Twelve Months, from the Bohemian, Toads 
and Diamonds, from the French. Admiration for steadfastness 

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and devotion began to express itself in stories of the maiden who 
keeps on through great hardships to free her lover from evil 
enchantment, as in East o’ the Sun and West o’ the Moon and the 
Russian counterpart of the same. 

More and more, simple moral and ethical ideals, shared by all 
mankind, with no necessity for intercommunion to impart the 
same, the natural expression of man’s growth everywhere, his 
higher longings and inner urgings began to form their own stories 
with a certain similarity among all peoples, and no one thing 
gives a better conception of the universal oneness of human 
nature, the similarity of its line of unfoldment everywhere than 
a glance over its old folk tales. 

From the foregoing explanation of the origin of folk tales it 
becomes apparent why, with so many gems of beauty as various 
collections possess, there still exist side by side with these, hideous 
barbarities, crudities and cruelties, survivals from the savage 
days of the story’s origin, step-mothers designing to eat their 
children, tempting them into chests and letting the lid down to 
crush in their heads, women cooking their step-children’s hearts 
to eat them, mothers and fathers deserting their own children 
to die in the woods; and it also makes clear why no scientific 
edition of folk tales, that is, a collection made for purely scientific 
study, is fit for children. For their use the most careful selection 
and editing of the old stories is necessary that the truly fine 
and beautiful may be preserved and the false and gross eliminated. 
As the folk tales were told by all manner of people throughout 
generations, the story had always to be put in the words of the 
one who told it. Thus while he stuck closely to the outline and 
spirit of the story as it existed everywhere, he might vary it 
slightly to suit his own conception of what was finest and most 
beautiful in it, or omit that which to him was valueless or dis- 
figuring. It is thus that all good versions of the folk tales have 
been told and it is thus that they are given in My BOOK HOUSE. 

184 


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KEY 


LATCH 

WHAT IS A MYTH? 
jg§||g|plMYTH is a popular story intended to explain some 
natural phenomenon or some phase or problem of life. 
In general, a myth deals with the actions of gods, or 
beings possessed of divine attributes. It seems most 
'probable that the myths were the outgrowth of the 
household tales and that, while the tales were preserved by the 
rude and uncultured among the races, the more advanced and 
intellectual of each folk refined these tales into the myths which 
gradually became the religions of the peoples. 

While many of the myths are merely poetical and impossible, 
though beautiful, explanations of natural phenomena, as How 
the Sunflower Came, Why Winter and Spring Come Every Year, 
etc., mythology as a whole means far more than that in the evolu- 
tion of human thought. As men in the very beginnings of ordered 
thinking, began to seek for causes beneath the outward appear- 
ance of things, to question and ponder instead of blindly accepting 
the universe, they could not escape striving to understand the 
power that creates, sustains and regulates the world, from which 
emanates the thought and life that pervades and animates all the 
universe; and, being unable to conceive of that power, so diversified 
in the infinite variety of its manifestations and operations, as one 
power, one God, they conceived of it as many gods; they per- 
ceived its various attributes and qualities as these appeared in 
human experience, and personified each of these as a god or goddess. 
Thus, when they perceived wisdom, truth, beauty, etc., to be 
vital and powerful elements of human life that must have a source 
somewhere, instead of conceiving of one God who is all wisdom, 
beauty, truth, bountifulness, productivity, strength, life, light and 
love, they conceived of a god or goddess who gave wisdom, a god 
or goddess who gave life, a god or goddess of beauty, a god or 
goddess of truth, bounty, productivity, strength, etc. Instead of 
one God whose power embraces the universe, there was a god of 

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the earth, a god of the sea, etc., and humanity’s innate perception 
of its own necessity for seeking divine help, help outside its own 
inadequate capacities, in time of trouble, expressed itself in seek- 
ing protection from the various gods, each of which was endowed 
with that protective power which belongs truly to God. 

Thus early man’s system of gods was only human thought in 
a state of evolution crudely and imperfectly recognizing the various 
attributes of the one God, naming and classifying the various 
unseen elements that go to make up life, commencing definitely, 
if slowly, to distinguish between good and evil. And back of their 
manifold gods, the myth-makers nearly all dimly perceived the 
idea of one power in an Odin or Jove who was All-father and 
supreme. It is said that the early Egyptian priests, though their 
religion always possessed far more points of dissimilarity than of 
similarity to the Hebrew, still possessed very distinctly this secret 
of one God, one Cause and Creator of the universe, and Mr. Pres- 
cott tells us in his Conquest of Mexico, that even the Aztecs, evolv- 
ing their religion so utterly ap art from the rest of the world, recog- 
nized, in spite of their barbarous myths of many gods, the existence 
of a supreme creator and Lord of the Universe. “They addressed 
him in their prayers as ‘the God by whom we live,’ ‘omnipresent, 
that knoweth all thoughts, and giveth all gifts,’ ‘without whom man 
is as nothing, ’‘invisible, incorporeal, one God, of perfect perfection 
and purity,’ ‘under whose wings we find repose and sure defence.’ 
These sublime attributes infer no inadequate conception of the 
true God.” He tells us furthermore, in The Conquest of Peru, 
“It is a remarkable fact, that many, if not most, of the rude 
tribes inhabiting the vast American continent, however disfigured 
their creeds may have been in other respects by a childish super- 
stition, had attained to the sublime conception of one Great 
Spirit, the Creator of the Universe, who, immaterial in his own 
nature, was not to be dishonored by an attempt at visible repre- 
sentation, and who, pervading all space, was not to be circum- 
scribed within the walls of a temple.” 


1 86 


THE LATCH KEY 

However much men still confused good and evil, sensual and 
spiritual qualities, in defining the nature of their gods, early 
mythology represents at least a pressing forward of primitive 
human thought toward explanations of the universe, toward some 
comprehensive grasp of the unseen force behind creation, and 
some attempt to sort out good from evil; and however great the 
jumble of superstitions with which the truth was still overlaid, 
each nation pressed just so far along this line of discovery as its 
particular thought was capable of reaching, untouched by the 
supreme truth which came with Christianity. 

Early myth-makers personified not only the qualities and 
elements which they perceived to be good in human existence, 
but also those elements which they perceived to be evil, sometimes 
as gods, as in the case of the Norse Loki, god of mischief and evil, 
father of sorrow and death, but more often as hideous monsters, 
giants or trolls. In the Norse, these personifications of evil were 
often creatures of mist and darkness, of lies and illusion, which 
must disappear before the light, certainly, not an unintelligent 
conception of evil, and the Norse not only set forth in their myths 
the material warfare of warmth and light against cold and dark- 
ness, but they set forth also the warfare of good against evil. In 
the Persian, the Children of Light war against the spells and 
illusions of the Children of Darkness, the Deevs, and again, the 
material sense of light wiping out darkness, has the deeper meaning 
of spiritual truth and enlightenment wiping out evil. 

In many of their myths the Norsemen reached a very lofty 
and beautiful conception of things. In the god Baldur, they 
honored all that was beautiful, eloquent, wise and good. He was 
the spirit of activity, joy and light. Even Thor, though he was 
degraded into a war god, seems at his best, in his encounters with 
the giants from the land of mists and winter, the land of lies and 
illusions, rather to have stood for that strong spiritual force that 
gives battle to evil, than a creator of strife among men, and his 

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thunderbolt for no destructive force, but for that beneficent power 
that smites the chains of winter and sets free the life-giving showers 
of spring. The Norse attain a high spiritual level, too, in their 
conception of the final disappearance of this world, with the twi- 
light of the gods, and the appearance of a new heaven and a new 
earth, an earth wherein goodness only dwells, an earth filled with 
abundance, regenerated and purified, where Baldur will come again 
with light and life, with wisdom, joy and goodness, and all evil 
ceases, for Loki is no more. 

Though all nations have had their myths, and many, the 
East Indians for example, have an enormous jumble, the Greek 
and Norse mythologies are the most complete and orderly. The 
Greek myths show a love of beauty and brightness, of warmth 
and color, that makes the Norse look somewhat dark and somber 
by contrast, yet the Greeks retained far more of the sensuous 
element and attained far less of the spiritual than the Norse, and 
in selecting stories from the Greek to tell to children, this fact 
needs always to be borne in mind when selections are made. 
There are, nevertheless, many very beautiful Greek myths. There 
are the story of Hercules, his patience and his labors to free man- 
kind from the various monsters, the myth of Echo and Narcissus, 
wherein the youth who loves only himself finds nothing but 
misery, unsatisfied longing and final death, the beautiful story of 
that dear old couple, Baucis and Philemon. All these and 
many others show true and right conceptions of things, and 
indicate that mythology, though it always remained a confused 
mixture of barbarism and beauty, with far more superstition than 
truth, and though it could never possibly have attained anything 
like the moral and spiritual height which a wholly consecrated, 
inspired, and persistent demand for truth did attain on the hills 
of Judea, holds nevertheless, when viewed in the right light, much 
beauty and much truth, which may be intelligently used for 
children. 


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THE WORLD’S GREAT EPICS 
An epic is an heroic narrative, sometimes in prose, but most 
often in poetry, treating in heroic style a theme of heroic pro- 
portions. Its unity generally consists in the fact that all the 
incidents are grouped about one central hero. As the folk tales 
reflect the commonplace, homely, every-day life of the various 
nations and peoples, so their highest, loftiest, noblest, most 
stirring and deeply moving thoughts have been expressed in their 
long epic poems. These were told and sung by wandering bards 
in hall and castle from generation to generation, until at last 
some poet appeared, of sufficient genius to write down the tale 
and give it permanent form in the peculiar style and rhythm of 
his own country. In these massive old epics, with their splendid 
seriousness and dignity, their enormous breadth of canvas, their 
rousing stir of activity, and the frequent rise of their lines into 
passages of great and lofty beauty, we find the finest literature of 
each country, and in retelling stories from the epics, somewhat, 
at least, of this heroic style should always be preserved. Too 
frequently turning the mere story of the epics into prose has 
robbed the tale of all that enormous and splendid spirit that gave 
it its real life and beauty. 

*GREEK EPICS 

THE ILIAD AND ODYSSEY 

HE greatest of all the world’s epics — The Iliad and 
Odyssey — are attributed to Homer, who is said to 
have lived between 1050 and 850 B. C. Ever since 
the second century B. C., however, the question 
whether Homer was the originator of these poems, 

*The Adventures of Odysseus by Padraic Colum. The Iliad for Boys and Girls by A. J. Church. 

The Odyssey for Boys and Girls by A. J. Church . 

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MY BOOK HOUSE 

or whether he merely recited verses already in existence, has 
been hotly disputed and it is probable that the Iliad was inspired 
by, or at least based upon previous poems. For centuries the 
Iliad and the Odyssey were publicly recited at gatherings of 
the Greek people, beneath the classic shadows of the Acropolis 
at Athens, in the stately marble porticoes of Greek dwellings, 
on the dappled lawns of temple groves overlooking the blue 
Aegean, and their splendid flowing lines, with their dignity 
and simplicity, have come down through the ages as the finest 
embodiment of Greek thought and spirit in existence, well 
worthy the race whose chief gift to humanity was the revelation 
of the gospel of beauty. The Iliad or Achilliad relates the happen- 
ings of some fifty days in the ninth year of the Trojan War, and the 
story all center about the hero, Achilles. The Odyssey is the story 
of Ulysses, or Odysseus as he is called in the Greek, after the fall of 
Troy and tells the story of his long ten years of wandering and his 
final arrival home. 

*LATIN EPICS 

THE AENEID 

The greatest Latin epic is the Aeneid, written by Vifgil in the 
first century A. D. It sings the wanderings of Aeneas, the 
Trojan, the heroic ancestor of the Romans, after he has escaped 
from the burning ruins of Troy. Since Roman literature was 
founded entirely on the Greek, the Aeneid is very closely akin in 
style and spirit to the Iliad and Odyssey. 

tPERSIAN EPICS 

THE SHAH-NAMEH 

Next in antiquity to the Greek epics is the 
Persian, the Shah-Nameh, or Book of Kings, 
which was composed by the poet Abul Kasin 
Mansur about 920 B. C. Abul Kasin sang 
so sweetly that his master, the Shah, 
termed him Firdusi, or Singer of Paradise, 

*The Aeneid for Boys and Girls by A. J. Church. 

\The Story of Rustem by Renninger . 

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by which name he is best known to the world. Mahmoud, 
Shah of Persia, who lived about 920 B. C., decided to have 
the chronicles of his land put into rhyme, and engaged Pirdusi 
for this piece of work, promising him a thousand gold pieces for 
every thousand couplets he finished. Now, Firdusi had long 
wished to build a stone embankment for the river whose over- 
flow devastated his native town, so he begged the King to with- 
hold payment for the poem until the work was done, believing 
that the reward would then be so great that he could build the 
dike. But when the poem was completed at the end of thirty- 
three years, the Grand Vizier counted its 60,000 couplets and 
decided that 60,000 pieces of gold was too enormous an amount 
of money to part with, so he sent instead 60,000 small pieces of 
silver. On receiving so inadequate a reward for his long years 
of labor, Firdusi became justly indignant, distributed the money 
contemptuously among its bearers, wrote a poem stating in 
plain and none too complimentary terms what he thought of the 
Shah, and then fled from the land. It was not until after Fir- 
dusi’s death that the Shah discovered the trickery of his minister 
and sent the 60,000 pieces of gold. As the poet’s daughter refused 
to accept this tardy atonement, another relative took the money 
and built the dike which Firdusi had so longed to see. 

Although the poem of Firdusi claims to be a complete history 
of Persia, it contains so many marvels, so many battles of the 
Kings with Deevs or devils (the Persian personification of evil) 
and is so involved and confused in incident, that were it not 
for its wonderful beauty of style and diction, it would scarcely 
have survived. The best stories in the Shah-Nameh are those 
dealing with Rustem, son of the white-haired Zal, and these are 
full of Persian flavor— of gardens and roses and nightingales. 

★EAST INDIAN EPICS 

MAHA-BHARATA AND RAMAYANA 

Following the Persian we have the two great East Indian 

*The Indian Story Book ( Tales from the Ramayana and Maha-Bharala ) by Richard Wilson. 

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sacred epics, the Maha-bharata, and the Ramayana. 
The Ramayana was composed in Sanscrit some 
five hundred years before Christ, and is a strange 
mixture of the wildest and most preposterous 
legends with the truest and deepest philosophy. 
It relates events which are said to have occurred between two 
thousand and nine hundred B.’C. The poem is generally attrib- 
uted to Valmiki, a hermit who dwelt on the bank of the Ganges. 
One day it chanced that Valmiki saw one bird of a happy pair 
slain, and he made use of so strange and expressive a meter in 
singing the pity stirred in his heart at the sight, that the god 
Brahma, the one supreme God of the Hindus, immediately bade 
him employ the same meter in narrating the adventures of Rama. 
Now Rama is supposed to be one of the seven appearances in the 
flesh of the god Vishnu, the personification of the preserving 
principle among the Hindus, who, to protect the right, and punish 
vice and wickedness, in various epochs of danger appeared on 
earth in bodily form. Vishnu it is who at length will destroy all 
evil and restore mankind to virtue and purity. The foes of 
Rama in the Ramayana are the evil spirits by which Hindu myth- 
ology symbolized evil. 

Like the Shah-Nameh, this poem is very long and involved 
as a whole, but out of it come many passages of the loftiest beauty 
— descriptions of nature that breathe the very heart of the tropical 
jungle, passages of the finest feeling, as for example, the one where 
Sita refuses to leave her husband in his exile. Its conception of the 
character of young Rama, too, — his love for his brothers, his 
devotion to his father, his modesty and humility, his control of 
his passions, his unfailing courtesy to his brothers’ mothers, 
his devotion to his people, his tenderness for his wife, his stead- 
fastness to his word, is one of remarkable beauty. Reading of 
this poem and frequent re-reading of it is regarded as a sacred 
duty by the Hindu. The Ramayana is his Bible. 



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♦FINNISH EPICS 

THE KALEVALA 

URNINGnow from the Orient to Europe, 
the oldest epic to claim attention is prob- 
ably the Finnish Kalevala, Land of Heroes, 
one of the four greatest national epics of the 
world. Although the Kalevala was not 
written down until the first half of the nine- 
teenth century, when Topelius and Lonnrot 
painstakingly took it from the mouths of the 
people and rescued it from oblivion, it 
incorporates within it poems that doubtless date back some 
three thousand years into Finnish antiquity. The Kalevala 
relates the every varying contests between the Finns and Lap- 
landers, Light and Darkness, Good and Evil, the Finns signi- 
fying Light and Good, the Laplanders Darkness and Evil. The 
story itself is both intricate and confused with a great multi- 
plicity of events and characters. The chief and remarkable 
beauty of the poem is in its wonderful rhythm, its splendid flights 
of imagination and its occasional passages of high spiritual beauty, 
where, through the mist and confusion of primitive man’s myth- 
ology, has penetrated a really inspired glimpse of the One Father, 
such, for example, as the prayers to Ukko. 

The poet who sang the song somewhere in the dim past says, 
“ Nature was my only teacher. 

Woods and waters my instructors,” 
and certainly, the rhythm of the poem does ring and trip and 
ripple with the very spirit of winds and waves and woodlands, 
and any retelling of this fine old epic which fails to give some 
conception of the unique beauty of the rhythm, and its finest, 
most imaginative and beautiful passages, by no means does it 
justice, since the mere story of the Kalevala has nothing of re- 
markable beauty to commend it. It is the way it is told and the 

*The Sampo, Hero Tales from the Finnish Kalevala , by James Baldwin . 

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thoughts that have been engrafted into it which make it so won- 
derfully beautiful. Longfellow copied the strange rhythm of 
Kalevala, its alliterative use of words and its delightful repeti- 
tions, very exactly and perfectly in Hiawatha. 

*NORSE AND GERMAN EPICS 

VOLSUNGA SAGA, FRITH JOF SAGA, N IBELUNGENL IED 

Norse literature has some very famous epics. The 
best known of these is the Volsunga Saga, the tale of 
Sigurd and Sigmund, descendants of Volsung. It 
tells the famous story how Sigurd slew the dragon, 
Fafnir, and how he broke through the ring of fire 
to rescue Brynhild, the Valkyr, from her long doom of sleep. 
The Volsunga Saga is also the source of the most famous German 
epic, the Nibelungenlied, the story of the accursed golden hoard 
of the Nibelungs or dwarfs, that brought such woe to Siegfried 
(the German Sigurd) and all who claimed it. But a more beauti- 
ful, though less known, Norse epic is the Saga of Frithjof, a 
story dearly beloved in Norway. 

tENGLISH EPICS 




BEOWULF, THE ARTHURIAN CYCLE, ROBIN HOOD 
N English our attention is first claimed by the Old 
English Beowulf, which was doubtless composed before 
the Angles and Saxons left Europe and settled in Britain. 
Among the Angles and Saxons the art of poetry was very generally 
cultivated, and the harp was passed around to all at feasts that 
every guest might play and sing. Besides this, there were pro- 
fessional poets called in Old English, “scops 
or gleomen,” who either travelled from 
place to place, or held permanent positions 
at the courts of chieftains or kings. These 
poets set out to sing of real events, but 
gradually they magnified the deeds of which 
they sang, and as the true event on which 


* Siegfried, the Hero of the North by Ragozin. The Story of Siegfried by 
” " r iking of N 01 


Volsung by Morris. Frithjof, The Viking of i 
t See foot note Page 195. 
194 



Baldwin. Sigurd 
r orway by Ragozin. 




THE LATCH KEY 

the poem was founded, receded into the past, the hero came to be 
pictured as enormously greater and stronger than he actually was, 
his deeds as infinitely more wonderful, until he became a sort of 
demi-god. Beowulf is held to have been a real person thus magni- 
fied, and stories about him arose among the Angles and Saxons in 
Europe in the seventh century A. D. These poems were originally 
heathen, and to this fact is due the mingling of heathen and 
Christian elements in the epic as we have it, for it was brought by 
the Angles and Saxons to England, gradually transformed as they 
became Christian, and written down at last by some Northum- 
berland monk. 

Though the scene of the poem is not England, — Beowulf was 
a Geat and his home somewhere in the Scandinavian peninsula, 
while Hrothgar was King of the Danes — it is decidedly and 
thorougly English in the social conditions it depicts, the ideals 
it presents, and the style in which it is written. It has great 
dignity and true elevation of thought, and the virtues which it 
exalts — courage, generosity, magnanimity, unselfishness, justice 
and courtesy, have always been particularly beloved in England. 

Like all Old English poetry, Beowulf is not in meter. The 
characteristic of Old English verse was a line divided in the middle 
by a pause and marked by alliteration, two words in the first half 
of the line beginning with the same letter as one word at least 
in the second half of the line, as for example: “How deeds of 
daring were done by their athelings,” or, “It burned in his spirit 
to bid men build him a dwelling.” Another interesting and 
marked characteristic of Old English verse is the use of a phrase 
to imply a thing instead of the direct name for the thing, which 
makes for a most lively descriptive style and lends an interesting 
variety to the whole. Thus, the sea is the whale-path, or swan- 
road, the sword is the battle-friend, the harp is the pleasure- 
wood, armour is war-gear, a ship is a sea-goer, etc. In retelling 
the Beowulf, story-tellers should aim to give some idea of this 

Th e Boy's King Arthur by Sidney Lanier. The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle. 

Northland Heroes ( Beowulf and Frithjof) by Florence Holbrook. 

Una and the Red Cross Knight by Royde Smith. 


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most interesting and very distinctive Old English style. The 
entire poem consists of two distinct stories, — the first how Beowulf 
delivered Heorot from Grendel and his mother, and the second, 
how Beowulf, years later, delivered his own land from a dragon. 

When Henry VIII, at Cromwell's suggestion, suppressed the 
monasteries in England, all the rich store of their libraries was 
scattered, much wantonly destroyed and lost. Some of the 
finest pieces of Old English literature were sold as old paper, used 
to scour candlesticks, to rub boots, or to wrap up grocers' bundles. 
It is a matter for which we may be very grateful, that in this 
general destruction, a single tenth century manuscript of Beowulf 
was preserved. This was injured by fire in 1731, so that the 
edges of the parchment are frayed and charred and many words 
and letters have disappeared, but the Beowulf still remains as 
the finest monument of Old English poetry, and a most inter- 
esting revelation of Old English thought and customs. 

Next to be noted in the story of the English epic is the Arthur- 
ian Cycle, a number of epics or romances about King Arthur, 
the Knights of the Round Table and the ladies of his court. 
Arthur probably was a really good and noble Celtic King of 
Britain in the early days of the Saxon invasion, but his original 
character was gradually transformed by story-tellers until by the 
end of the twelfth century he had become merely an ideal king 
by means of whom chivalry could express its highest aims and 
ideals. There were likewise German, French, Welsh and many 
other versions of the Arthurian tales, — the German version by Wol- 
fram von Eschenbach, the French by Chretien de Troyes. The 
best known English version was by Thomas Mallory and all of 
these were written in prose. Tennyson's Idylls of the King are 
the Arthurian legends still further idealized and put into poetry. 

Milton's Paradise Lost , Chaucer's Tales , and Spenser's Faerie 
Queene f are, of course, epics also, but they are the compositions 
of the poets who wrote them, not folk-epics like the others. 

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The beloved Robin Hood story was compiled from some two 
score old English ballads of various dates, some going as far back 
as the year 1400, and all full of the folk-spirit. In presenting 
this tale to children, it has always depended on how the story 
was told, whether it was sound or unsound, good or bad. If 
Robin Hood is presented as a thief and a robber, whom the child 
is invited to admire for his trickery and the ready use of his wit 
in questionable adventures, it is bad, but if he is presented as a 
true man of the sturdy and merry old English type, a lover of 
liberty and justice, who needs must be an outlaw in a period when 
the yeoman had no rights at all, and Justice abode not in the 
courts and laws of the land, it may be full of fine inspiration and 
feeling, as well as the joy of the free and glorious life in the green- 
wood. Though the ballads themselves contain many question- 
able adventures which it is necessary to recognize and avoid, 
no one can sympathetically read those old poems without loving 
their spirit, and feeling that the innate love of the English people 
for honest honesty, not conventional honesty, for justice and 
freedom, as well as the Englishman’s unquenchable love for 
merry humor, were the inspiration of the original ballads, and 
suggest the key in which to pitch any retelling of the same. 

♦IRISH EPICS 

THE CUCHULAIN 

In Ireland there were three great cycles of poetry 
sung by the old Gaelic bards long years ago when 
Ireland was still pagan and had her own Irish gods. 
These cycles consisted of scattered poems never put 
into one great whole, and the finest and most Irish 
of them all is the one dealing with Cuculain or 
Cuchulain and the Knights of the Red Branch. 
Cuculain and his friends are historical characters, 
seen as it were, through mists of love and wonder, 
magnified into their gigantic stature just as all art 

*The Cuchulain by Standish O' Grady. The Boy's Cuchulain by Eleanor Hull. 

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MY BOOK HOUSE 

magnifies, just as sculpture can create the gigantic statue of a 
man. The large manner of this antique Gaelic literature simply 
wipes out all littleness in its presence. Nothing small in the 
heart of man can stand before real sympathy with the enormous 
simplicity of this heroic tale of primitive Irish life. 

Standish O’Grady was the first Irishman to reveal in a noble 
manner the greatness in this long neglected bardic literature of 
Ireland. He himself had the soul of an ancient epic poet, and 
as he carves out for us in sentences now charged with heroic energy, 
now beautifully quiet and tender, and always magnificently 
simple, the enormous figures of the Red Branch, we feel through 
and through that Cuchulain is indeed the true incarnation of 
Gaelic chivalry, its fire and gentleness, its hardy purity of mind, 
its largeness, its modesty and simplicity. Through the pages of 
O’Grady the ruddy chivalry of Ireland passes huge and fleet and 
bright, enormous images that loom as great as any among the 
epic heroes of the world. 

*FRENCH EPICS 

CHANSON DE ROLAND 

The national epic in France bears the 
characteristic name, Chanson de Geste, 
or Song of Deeds, because the trouveres, 
the wandering singers in the north, and the 
troubadours in the south, wandered from 
castle to castle singing the deeds of their 
lords. The greatest group or cycle of these 
chansons, of which there were three, dealt 
with Charlemagne, the great champion of 
Christianity, and his twelve faithful paladins or peers. When it 
was composed is uncertain, but the oldest copy now extant, dates 
back to the twelfth century. The song, nevertheless, is much 
older than this. Like so many of the epics it was based on his- 
torical fact, later magnified and altered. The entire poem is 

*The Story of Roland by James Baldwin. Frithjof and Roland by Ragozin. 

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overhung and overshadowed by the dark and gloomy cloud of 
Ganelon’s treachery, and no piece of literature in the world has 
more truly the feeling of the fearful ugliness of treachery than 
the Chanson de Roland. 

■“SPANISH EPICS 

THE CID 

In Spain the great epic poem as well as the oldest 
monument of Spanish literature is the Poema del 
Cid, written about 1200 A. D., a compilation 
from ballads already in existence, relating the 
story of Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar, called Campeador 
or Champion and Cid or Chief. The Cid was 
born between 1030 and 1040 A. D. and his heroic 
deeds were performed at a time when Christian 
kings were making special efforts to eject the Moors who had 
invaded Spain three hundred years before. Although the char- 
acter of the Cid is, to our minds, defaced on many occasions by 
ugly deeds far from ideal according to our standards today, still 
the Cid’s faults are largely results of the mistaken standards of 
his time and race, and in his virtues of kindliness, generosity, 
tenderness, courage, fidelity, he looms head and shoulders above 
the characters that surrounded him. Rarely has a man become 
the peculiar hero of a nation without some real virtues to com- 
mend him, and in the story of the Cid, nothing is more peculiarly 
his virtue than his devotion to his wife and daughters, which 
furnishes an incident well worth re-telling. 

CHINESE AND JAPANESE EPICS 

WHITE ASTER 

The Chinese story of White Aster is scarcely an epic, but 
rather an idyll or romantic tale. Nevertheless, it passes 
both in Japan and China for an epic. It was written in 
Chinese verse by Professor Inouye and has been ren- 
dered also in classical Japanese. 

*The Story of the Cid by Wilson. 

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HOW TO JUDGE STORIES FOR CHILDREN 
An Address 
Olive Beaupre Miller 

WHENEVER I am asked to make an address on the 
subject of children's reading, I always feel I want 
to begin by explaining that I speak not from the 
standpoint of a professor, a librarian, or a literary 
critic, but simply as one mother to other mothers, 
with such knowledge of the subject as I have 
gained from a most loving and sympathetic study 
of the nature of childhood at all the various stages 
of its development and a most earnest desire to bring to children all 
the good that is obtainable, holding every other consideration of 
small account beside the serving of the real interests of the child 
himself. 

Although there has already been a great awakening to the 
importance of what the child reads outside the school-room, I feel 
that such reading is still regarded by too many parents as merely 
an amusement, of no great importance, with no object save to 
entertain the child. It is therefore held to be deserving of even less 
attention or supervision than his play. My earnest wish today is 
to get down beneath this superficial view of the subject, and place 
the whole matter of reading before you in its true light, as the very 
basis of your child's thought, of his views of life, of the moral and 
ethical standards he is forming, the spirit that is awakening and 
quickening in him, the character that is unfolding. 

THE INFLUENCE OF IMAGINATIVE LITERATURE 

What I have to say applies particularly to imaginative liter- 
ature or fiction. I know the world has always taken more or less 
seriously the subject of scientific reading — reading of books on 
history, biography, science, etc. It has recognized the value of 
adding to the child's store of facts. I do not need to convince you 
on that point and so I am not referring to such books at all. Let 


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the child read all of them he will; they are good for him. But it 
has been in the field of fiction that mothers and fathers have 
thought, “Oh, it doesn't matter much what Robert reads — it’s 
only a story anyway!” 

My friends, there are stories and stories and nothing matters 
much more than which story Robert reads. Robert may know all 
the scientific facts in the universe, may know the Encyclopedia 
Britannica backwards and forwards, and still never have per- 
ceived that selfishness, dishonesty, cunning, cruelty, weakness, 
narrowness of vision, are evil qualities which he does not wish to 
possess, and that courage and faith, strength and perseverance, 
honesty, loyalty, breadth of vision, are qualities which are splendid 
and admirable, which he does wish to possess. 

In the settling of those great problems which have been stirred 
to the surface in the restless world of today and are facing the rising 
generation, problems needing greater wisdom and breadth of view 
for their solution than have ever faced the world before, is it going 
to be of more importance to Robert to know that the Battle of 
Hastings was fought in the year 1066 or to have innately and uncon- 
sciously acquired a love of justice and truth, an admiration for the 
big and unselfish view-point? 

I am not belittling scientific reading; it is absolutely necessary 
and many a finely written history or biography may and often 
does accomplish the same thing as fiction, but I am bringing out as 
clearly as possible, that the value of the best fiction has been much 
under-rated and that because it has been under-rated, the best and 
most intelligent use has not been made of it in the child’s develop- 
ment. The best fiction certainly will mould your child’s ideals and 
standards, his views of life, his judgments on life, as surely as it 
widens his mental horizon, shows him other points of view than his 
own, quickens his imagination and his joyous appreciation of 
beauty, livens his sense of humor, deepens his emotions, and at 
every turn fires his spirit into life. 


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THE MESSAGE IN ALL GREAT FICTION 

Thomas Hardy in his great novel, Two on a Tower, which 
doubtless many of you recall, gives a striking picture of the little, 
narrow, scientific mind, unillumined by that broad human sym- 
pathy which the best fiction awakens. The hero is the young as- 
tronomer, Swithin St. Cleeve, whose mental gaze is completely 
limited to the pursuit of further discoveries concerning the stars. 
He is absolutely unable to enter with any sympathetic understand- 
ing into the life and thoughts of those about him, and the havoc 
he works in the life of the splendid woman who loves him by always 
taking her literally, never being able to see what is not directly 
under his nose, to imagine or dream that she might be thinking or 
feeling something that she does not speak out, and that is not 
apparent on the surface, is a striking illustration of the point in 
question. If Lady Constance, from the height of self-abnegation, 
bids Swithin leave her because she believes his own good demands 
it, he obediently goes, without ever being able to realize that it is 
her own utter but unspoken sacrifice of self, not her pretended 
personal desires which bids him go, and that his going can mean 
nothing but sorrow and misery for her. 

Always and ever it is only what is literal and apparent, to be 
discovered by the observation of the eye as one might discover 
facts concerning the stars, that Swithin St. Cleeve can understand, 
and one is deeply impressed by the perception that such a type of 
thought, though it might contribute a very learned article to the 
Encyclopedia Britannica , would be bound to spell tragedy in its 
human relationships, and indeed could never contribute to the world 
the most truly broad and useful service. And one wishes, wishes, 
wishes, that Swithin St. Cleeve had been steeped in fairy tales in 
his youth. What the world so sorely needs is thought, not only 
persistently seeking facts, but also infused and enlivened and 
enlightened by a broad human sympathy and understanding, a 
heart and soul capable of quick response to all those finer emotions 


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that open the hearts of men outward, away from self to the needs 
of the world. And so we need both the encyclopedia and the story. 
THE VALUE OF FICTION IN CHILDREN’S READING 
CTUST as the best fiction for us grownups — I am 
I not speaking of course, of the mountain of trash 

/ that calls itself fiction in these days, but of such 

. 1 books as Two on a Tower and many another of 
I'll'// its kind — just as that fiction gives us a truer 

knowledge of human nature, a clearer under- 
* standing of human motives, a broader, juster, 

more accurate and compassionate judgment of men and events, 
so does fiction do the same thing for the smallest child. 

Beginning with his earliest fairy tales, the child commences to 
see in his stories, quite without any drawing of morals or particular 
direction of his attention to the fact, what qualities are splendid 
and noble, what qualities are base and ignoble, and for the very 
reason that the tale does entertain him, does interest him so in- 
tensely and move him to the very depths of his being, the impres- 
sion left by the story is far more lasting and permanent than any 
sermon that could be preached on the subject, and constitutes 
itself an influence upon him greater than any other one thing which 
comes into his life, except the ideas and ideals that surround him 
in his own home, which, it must never be forgotten, leave the most 
telling marks upon his character. Hence the immense importance 
of always soliciting his admiration and sympathy for those qualities 
which are truly fine and never confusing his standards by holding 
up for his approval, trickery, dishonesty, cunning, deceit, and the 
rest of the train of evil. 

It has been said that fairy tales give many children their first 
clear perception of the distinction between right and wrong, good 
and evil, and at their best this is certainly true. No child can sym- 
pathize deeply with the patience and gentleness and sweetness of 
Cinderella and hate the selfishness and vanity of the stepsisters, 


203 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

without all unconsciously registering a definite and lasting impres- 
sion which forms a permanent part of his ideals. 

Please understand, I am not arguing at all for the moral or 
moralizing tale — far, far from it, nor for definitely using stories to 
point morals, and so often destroying their art and the very quali- 
ties by which they charm the fancy and grip the heart. I am only 
saying that, by their very substance and content and spirit, the 
best stories do all unconsciously accomplish these results. The 
preachy, moralizing tale usually defeats its own purpose. 

THE EVIL OF THE PREACHY STORY 

§ NCE, as a child, I got from an old-fashioned Sunday 
School library a book called Willie Trying to Be Good — 
I don’t know what there was in the title that allured 
me, but anyway I chose it. Willie was a most self- 
righteous, unnatural, goody-goody little prig, and I 
had read no more than two chapters concerning Willie, when I 
wanted to creep up behind him and pinch him just to see if I could 
startle him out of his owlish primness by means of a perfectly 
natural “Ouch!” What was most remarkable about Willie was that 
he kept a great book and whenever anyone did anything kind for 
him he straightway ran and wrote down all about it in his book. 
Here he had neatly and accurately tabulated Mother, Father, Aunt 
Betsy and all the rest of the family, and then if Aunt Betsy did 
something which tempted him to be angry, instead of wickedly ex- 
pressing his anger, he nobly restrained himself, went and looked in 
his great book under the index “B,” found the name of Aunt Betsy 
and read all the good things Aunt Betsy had done for him, where- 
upon his anger departed and he betook himself to Aunt Betsy to 
deliver unto her a long and sanctimonious oration relating how he 
had been tempted and had overcome the temptation! 

As I remember, on finishing the book I threw it across the room 
in such forceful disgust as to make a great deal of repairing neces- 
sary before it went back to the library, and the next time I was out 


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of doors and thoughts of the saintly Willie popped into my mind, 
I picked a quarrel with a wholly innocent and inoffensive little 
neighbor girl, although I was by nature a peaceable child, just to 
show how different I was from Willie! 

So I am not referring at all to books with a moral. I merely 
mean that all truly great literature worthy the name has expressed 
quite unself-conciously men’s natural love and admiration for 
what is truly great and good and their natural perception of the 
ugliness of what is evil and false, and that this point of view, so in- 
estimably valuable, is all unconsciously absorbed by the child, the 
very spirit of the work communicates itself to his spirit, if the 
selections made for his reading are wise. 

THE DANGER OF UNSOUND LITERATURE 

HOUGH Willie Trying To Be Good errs on the 
moralizing side, there are other stories sanctioned 
by the literary world because they have great 
literary beauty, which err as much on the oppo- 
site side, books which, in spite of their literary 
quality, are morally unsound and should be ta- 
booed. Such a story is “Puss in Boots.” The youth 
in “Puss in Boots,” as you know, is a lazy good- 
for-nothing who wants a fortune in the world without working for 
it; and his cat, who is the hero of the tale, by a succession of lies, 
clever, cunning lies, gains for his lazy, good-for-nothing master an 
enormously splendid castle, a princess for his wife and succession to 
the Kingdom. The master is thus left revelling in material riches 
which he has done nothing to earn, and which have been acquired 
by clever dishonesty; and the child is left with the unconscious 
impression that the great aim in life is to be rich, and it doesn’t 
make any difference how you attain that purpose, how clever and 
cunning and sly you may have been, so long as you get away with 
it and attain your object. 

Does the world need any further encouragement to hang on to 



205 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

such a distorted view? It certainly does not. And such stories, 
though of very great age and literary standing, should be allowed 
by intelligent mothers to die a natural death out of childhood 
literature. It is not that the influence of such a book is direct; it 
is not that if your child reads it he may go out tomorrow and 
commit some dishonest act; the influence is far more subtle and 
indirect. It is this— as he reads a succession of such stories, grad- 
ually the sharp, clear-cut edge is rubbed off his ideals and he begins 
to think that honesty is not such an important matter as he had 
imagined after all. Certainly the great evil of the world today is 
not that men are going about murdering each other wholesale. 
They are doing nothing so delightfully open in their dabblings 
with evil. They are merely refusing to face squarely the ab- 
solutely necessary separation which must be made between those 
qualities which are actually, absolutely, finally good, and those 
qualities which are actually, absolutely, finally evil, and so they are 
continuing in their smug self-satisfaction, their mental and spiritual 
laziness, to express in their various relationships and lines of activ- 
ity, all the subtle dishonesty, selfishness, littleness, bigotry, super- 
stition, conventionality, narrowness, envy, hatred and greed of a 
flourishing and unchallenged but well veiled and covered evil, that 
all too frequently wears the cloak of righteousness and respecta- 
bility. In other words, the great need of the world today -is for 
higher, more accurate and clearly defined ideals, and a far more 
consecrated determination to make a beginning at least, of putting 
these ideals into operation in all the varied activities of human 
life, from the least to the greatest. And I cannot too forcefully 
insist on the fact that we are utterly blind and unthinking if we 
continue to grind into our children’s thoughts the twisted ethics 
of all too many among the stories that are offered him. 

Matthew Arnold once splendidly defined true culture as the 
study of perfection, and he further defined perfection as an “inward 
condition of the mind and spirit” that results from “subduing the 

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obvious faults of our animality” and bringing to light “the true 
ideal of beauty, of sweetness and light, and a human nature com- 
plete on all its sides.” This, then, is the real aim of all true, 
honest, genuine culture, the bringing to light of a higher ideal of 
perfection, of a human nature complete, well rounded and bal- 
anced on all its sides. This means that intellectual culture must be 
everlastingly linked to moral and spiritual culture, that outward 
beauty of form must always be coupled with inward beauty of spirit. 
To attain such a culture should be the real object of all reading. 

So let the heroes and heroines of the tales which you choose for 
your child solicit his deep sympathy and interest for the nobler 
qualities, for patience and perseverance, loyalty and truth, cour- 
age and compassion, and he will live those qualities with his heroes. 

THE CHOICE OF FAIRY TALES 

AIRY tales, welling up from the simple, nat- 
ural, untrained hearts of the common people, 
have been called the wild-garden of literature 
and they could not be more beautifully des- 
cribed. They are “the wild-rose in the hedge- 
rows, the lily of the valley, the wind-flower, 
the meadowsweet, in contrast to the cultivated 
rose or gorgeous poppy that grows in the ordered gardens, beside 
the classic fountains of Literature’s stately palaces.” 

But let us remember that in wild gardens there are weeds as 
well as beautiful blossoms, and so for our children, we need to weed 
out the weird and sensational, the unwholesome, the savage and 
morbid, and leave the pure and beautiful fancies, the vigorous, 
flourishing strength, the splendid, unself-conscious simplicity. 
There are many, many bad fairy tales and no one phase of your 
child’s reading needs more careful supervision than his fairy tales. 
The sad fact is, too, that few editors have given you wholly satis- 
factory books on this subject, their judgment having been too fre- 
quently led astray by the literary beauty of certain undesirable tales. 

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MY BOOK HOUSE 


I should never give a young child a whole volume of Grimm, 
Dasent, Asbjornsen, Jacobs or any other literary collection of folk 
tales. They contain many horrible stories. If the child is to have 
these books whole at any time, let it be when he is older, say in 
the fourth or fifth grades, can read them without fear and has some 
ability within himself to throw off the evil that is there. Remem- 
ber, a very young child refuses nothing — he soaks up every idea 
and impression — it is only as we grow older and our standards 
of life begin to assume some definite shape within us, that we 
sort out impressions that come to us, take the good and reject 
the bad. Choose rather a book of fairy tales carefully edited 
by someone who has truly understood young children and their 
needs. Let your fairy tales be as fanciful as you like — the child 
needs his flights of fancy; nothing great in the world was ever 
accomplished without imagination, and let these be the old folk 
tales, but let them be also wholesome, sound and true. All too 
frequently modern fairy tales, while they may lack some of the more 
objectionable features of the old stories, are sentimental and wishy- 
washy, and lack also all the splendid and convincing sincerity, 
vitality and strength of the folk tales. These old tales, properly 
weeded, still remain the real solid foundation for a child's reading. 

A PLEA FOR TRUTH IN REALISTIC FICTION 



OW let us turn from fairy tales to realistic fiction, 
stories of events that might really have happened in 
actual life. We have seen that the most imaginative 
and fanciful fairy tale may be true, not true to material 
fact, but true to right ideas and ideals, and now when 
we come to realistic stories let us demand further that these 
stories be actually true to human experience. Let us ask that 
their characters be not abnormally good or bad, that the happen- 
ings be not exaggerated, but that they deal with real live boys 
and girls. I do not mean boys and girls glorying in mischief and 
many of the tricks thought necessary to make a child's book 


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THE LATCH KEY 

interesting; I mean worth while children, but not impossible ones. 

And here you have whole hosts of books to avoid. I am sure I 
do not need to caution you against the sensational, racy, hair-rais- 
ing ones, but I dp want to advise you against the sentimental, 
wishy-washy ones, which are so often called “safe” because the 
evil in them is less apparent. These books give children no ade- 
quate view of human experience and its problems as they are really 
going to find them, but substitute weakness for strength, and de- 
lude them into the belief that life’s victories may be cheaply and 
easily won, thus giving them no preparation whatever for the real, 
steady, persistent effort that success in any line will demand of 
every man. Such books are trash — only littering up children’s 
mental store-houses. 

Books in series are almost always of this type. In my child- 
hood Horatio Alger was the chief representative of the series type — 
Sink or Swim, Live or Die, Survive or Perish. There was always 
a rich boy who was hideously villainous and a poor boy with a halo 
of righteousness about his head, and the poor boy always suffered 
the most dreadful outrages at the hands of the rich boy, but in the 
end the poor boy always grew marvelously rich and the villainous 
rich boy became marvelously poor, which gave the saintly poor boy 
an opportunity to be most superhumanly magnaminous, forgive 
the rich boy and restore him to his own again. When you’ve read 
one of those books you’ve read them all. They make no demand 
whatsoever upon your intelligence. Reading them gets to be a 
habit — one becomes a regular serial drunkard and imbibes at least 
one a day. Don’t encourage your child to get that habit. 

-r INSIST UPON REAL LITERATURE 
I OW just one word more. Be sure that a book is 
well written. You may think this matter is not 
particularly important beyond its effect on your 
child’s use of the English language, but it is. Often 
the subtlest, most indirect influences are the greatest. The 


209 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

very order of a well-written book influences a child, its unity and 
beauty, while a sloppily written story tends to induce disordered 
sloppy thinking. It is the literary perfection of a story which pricks 
a child’s soul to new hunger and thirst after beauty and perfection. 

Occasionally, a book of fine contents, poorly written, is worth- 
while, and I admit I would far rather my child would read a badly 
written book the substance of which was good, than a literary class- 
ic the substance of which was evil, yet our aim should always be 
well-written books. Help your child to select such books, do all 
you can to urge him to read them and to avoid the cheap and 
trashy stories. Talk to your boy or girl about the books he reads. 
Get interested in them yourself, keep his confidence on that point 
and you will find you are actually discussing with him the most 
vital problems of life. 

FOR A HEALTHY MENTAL DIGESTION 

Remember, whenever you see your boy or girl with a book, that 
the quality of that book is at least as important as the food you 
serve him. Would you give him impure food? No! Would you 
give him sloppily prepared food? No! Would you clutter up his 
digestion with all sorts of useless pastries and cakes and candies? 
No! Would you give him wholesome, nourishing, well-cooked, well- 
balanced food? Yes! Then do the same for his mind. The books he 
reads are his mental food. He swallows the ideas that form the 
substance of those books as surely as he swallows meat and potato. 
If his digestion is good he eliminates the evil and absorbs into his 
mental system the good. Those ideas which he absorbs circulate 
through his mind no less certainly than blood through his body, and 
he gives them out again as mental energy in the form of the motives 
that prompt his every act. How important it is then that the ideas 
fed him should be pure and his mental digestion be kept healthy. 
What is a sound body without a sound mind to govern it? 
Germany gave us an example of the havoc that can be wrought by 
sound phvsical bodies without right ideals and standards to move 


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them. We want no more of that for the welfare of the world. The 
future is going to make great demands on our children. Let us 
do all in our power to have them prepared to meet those demands 
and let us by no means neglect the* proper use of so powerful an 
agency for good in their development as the world of books. 

MY BOOK HOUSE 

After closing this general discussion on the subject of children’s 
reading, in which I have aimed to give you some few principles for 
judgment and selection, I have been asked to say a few words 
about My BOOK HOUSE, the carefully selected collection of 
stories and poems for children on which I have spent the past four 
years, and which I undertook through discovering for my own 
child what a chaos the field of children’s literature was, what a 
mixture of good and bad, of gems and trash, and how great and 
universal was the need for such a work. In these books I have 
endeavored to collect the best stories and poems for children from 
the literature of all ages and all peoples and to embody in them 
the principles of selections which I have just been describing to you. 
THE THREE TESTS 

IRST I have always asked myself, “Has this story 
literary merit?” If it has not, there is no need of 
going further. If it has, I have then asked secondly, 
“Will it interest the child?” If it will not interest him, 
what difference does it make how great its literary 
merit may be? If it has literary merit and will interest him, 
my third question has been, “Will what it adds to his life be for 
his good? Is its underlying idea true, does it present sound stan- 
dards, is its spirit fine, its atmosphere healthful?” Many a good 
story has failed to pass this last test, but so far as my judgment 
and understanding goes, I have always applied it rigidly. 

A story having then passed all three of these tests I have next 
asked myself, “What is the best age at which to present this tale 
to the child, the age at which he will get the most out of it?” And 



21 1 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

so I have tried to grade the stories as intelligently as possible. 

PROPERLY GRADED STORIES 

Remember we can never be too old to appreciate a piece of good 
literature. Many a dear old grandmother writes us apologetically 
that she enjoys the first book, In the Nursery as much as her 
smallest grandchildren, and I always feel like writing back, “Oh 
you dear grandmother, of course you enjoy Mother Goose and all 
those delicious, simple, joyous, nonsensical old tales, for the spirit 
of childhood is eternal in the human heart. ‘Except ye become as 
little children ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.’ 
One or one hundred, what is the difference — the Kingdom of Heav- 
en certainly consists in having the heart of a child!” One can 
never be too old for good literature, but one may be too young. 

The proper grading of stories from this standpoint is one of the 
most important questions to be considered in the discussion of 
children’s reading. A story that will make a most sound and 
healthful impression on a child of eight may be absolutely un- 
healthful at three or five. Very seldom has a good collection of 
stories been produced for children from the age of two to five — and 
this because few people, except mothers, really understand the 
little tot at this period, and most mothers of children at that age 
have something else to do besides write or edit stories. The child 
then is as different as possible from what he is when he begins to go 
to school or kindergarten. He is a little bundle of laughter, giggles 
and sunshine, and yet he is the most solemn creature on earth. 
His sense of humor is almost nil, or, rather, what is funny to him 
is not what is funny to grown-ups. He takes life tremendously 
seriously. He has as yet no philosophy with which to overcome 
any little sorrow, and he knows almost nothing of the great prob- 
lem of evil with which he will one day be called to cope. 

We have recently had a little nephew visiting us, a thoroughly 
sturdy, boyish little fellow about two and a half years old, not the 
kind one would ever accuse of being abnormally sensitive. As he 


212 


THE LATCH KEY 



sat on his mother’s lap she often read to him: 


11 Three little kittens 
They lost their mittens 
And they began to cry ; 

‘0 mammy dear , 

We sadly fear 

That we have lost our mittens !’ 
'What! lost your mittens , 

You careless kittens , 

Then you shall have no pie,’ 
'Mee-aw, mee-aw , mee-aw!’ 
'No, you shall have no pie!’ 

' Mee-aw , mee-aw , mee-aw !’ ” 



To watch that child's face as his mother read was a study. He 
followed the fate of those kittens with a breathless intensity and 
troubled concern worthy at least of Eliza crossing the ice with a 
pack of bloodhounds at her heels, and the relief, the radiant smiles 
that blossomed forth on his little face when those kittens found 
their mittens and got their pie were illuminating, all indicating 
quite clearly that much deeper tragedy than that which befell 
those three little kittens would be quite beyond his present powers 
of endurance. What a child will laugh at most heartily and see the 
humor of at six or seven is deadly earnest to him at three. And 
while we want quick response from children to all the nobler sen- 
timents, to pity and compassion, as well as to joy and love, we will 
never overplay their emotions. To do this makes them morbid, 
sensitive and nervously excited. That is why at this period we 
need to be so particularly careful. 

Now the understanding of such a state of thought, the sympa- 
thetic grasp of a very little child's viewpoint, seldom comes to any- 
one but a mother, and even with us mothers that understanding 
is the most evanescent thing in the world. As our own children 
grow older, acquire some sense of humor and some philosophy, we 
ourselves forget what these children thought and felt at two. But 
it has been my steady aim never to forget it or belittle it, to take it 
rather into intelligent consideration, and uncompromisingly de- 


213 


MY BOOK HOUSE 


mand that stories for the little one at this period be full of joy and 
sunshine and his own beautiful simplicity. 

The child needs as yet to have very little to do with the prob- 
lems of evil. That and its overcoming which lend strength to books 
for older children, can and must be presented to him gradually. 
Moreover, make it a general rule never at this age or any other to 
give a child a book which you think will leave him with a sense 
of fear, with a sense of evil as some great, mysterious awful 
power from which he cannot escape. Such a sense kills all en- 
deavor. Stories should always lead him to feel that he can come 
out on top and have dominion over evil. It is this that spurs him 
on to resist evil. 

WHEN THE CHILD IS YOUNG 



HILDREN ordinarily start school, that is kinder- 
garten, when they are about five years old, and 
their thought begins then to be systematically guid- 
ed and directed in right lines and channels, but what 
about those precious years before the child starts 
school? Should his thought at that time be left unguided and 
undirected? Should he be allowed “just to grow up”? Those first 
formative years are among the most important in the child’s life and 
offer the most fertile field possible to the mother for moulding his 
thought by means of good stories and implanting in him, from the 
very beginning, sound and true views of life. During those years 
she is the sole guardian of his reading. Later, even as early as seven 
or eight, he will begin to select his own stories. What more import- 
ant then, than that she should sow all the good seed possible while 
she is able to do so, thus forming the foundation of a sound charac- 
ter and of good judgment in his later selection of books? 

Mothers begin to sing nursery rhymes and lullabies to their 
babies when they are a few days old. They should have at hand 
easily accessible for their use the very best. Why not let the child 
hear nothing else but the best? Does it make any difference that 


214 


THE LATCH KEY 

at first he does not understand the words? The very rhythm, 
music and melody of the good rhymes and lullabies soothe, quiet 
and train him. Why not let a child’s ear for poetry be thus trained 
from the very beginning and so give him something good instead 
of something bad from the cradle? 

IN THE NURSERY 

HE first volume of My BOOK HOUSE, In the Nursery, 
has been very carefully worked out to meet just this 
need of the youngest child, and is perhaps as remark- 
able for what it excludes as for what it includes. It 
is made up of a most careful selection of nursery 
rhymes, leading on gradually to the very simplest rhythmic stories, 
demanding at each step a little more attention and concentra- 
tion, a little more and a little more, till the child is led on natural- 
ly to listen to the more complicated stories. The child’s next need 
after Mother Goose is always for these short rhythmic stories in 
prose, stories of the simplest possible plot, construction and word- 
ing. It is not yet possible to hold his attention on one subject for 
any great length of time, and the charm of rhythm is still a great 
factor in the appeal for his interest. 

In The Nursery has almost no fairy tales. The child is as yet 
so young that the supernatural element confuses him. He is just 
learning the real world about him, and does not know where to 
place fairies and elves. I once met a little boy of three to whom a 
volume of Grimm was being read. He was a delicate, peevish, over- 
wrought little creature and had fairies and angels and Santa Claus 
and God all in a hopeless muddle. So the stories and poems in In 
the Nursery deal with the actual world to which the child is just 
awakening, and are crammed full of the beauty and joy of earth 
and sky, of wind and sun, of bird and bee and flower. 

ON THROUGH MY BOOK HOUSE 
The second volume, Up One Pair of Stairs, is designed to ex- 
pand the child’s thought, give him stories of child life in other 

215 



MY BOOK HOUSE 

countries, and introduce to him the more simple fairy tales. 

The third volume, Through Fairy Halls , is distinctively the book 
of fairy tales, gathered from the folk lore of almost every nation in 
the world. The child has now reached the age when fairy tales will 
no longer confuse him, when you can safely and most profitably 
give them to him. Quite unconsciously he now feels the fairy as a 
great spiritual force for good, always appearing at just the right 
time, to restore justice, to aid and protect virtue, to offer golden 
opportunities; and as unconsciously he feels the trolls and giants 
and monsters to be examples of evil, of cruelty, overbearance and 
bestiality, with whose wiping off the slate he heartily and rightly 
sympathizes. As these evil creatures are most useful in symobliz- 
ing to the child all those qualities which he does not want, we need 
only, in dealing with them, avoid the pitfall which makes many 
writers, in their anxiety to make ugliness appear ugly, make it so 
hideously ugly as to be terrifying. This is unfortunately true of 
many giant stories. The important questions always are, What 
is the impression this story is going to leave with the child? What 
qualities is it going to call out in him? If the story has left him with 
a sense of terror, and appealed only to his love of the sensational, 
it has accomplished nothing, and while we can by no means afford 
to compromise with bestiality and make it appear less than ugly, 
we still must be wise and sane in our dealing with this question. 

Thus the third volume, Through Fairy Halls , is chiefly fairy 
tales, but it is well balanced, as are all these volumes, with good, 
realistic and humorous stories, since the child should at no time 
be allowed stories all of one type, lest his thought grow one-sided. 

The Treasure Chest , is the book of adventure, progressing from 
the more adventurous fairy tales to realistic adventure. 

From The Tower Window , is the book of romantic adventure, 
and its basic material consists of stories from the great national epics. 

In this manner each one of the five volumes represents a distinct 
phase of the child's development. The last volume, The Latch Key , 

216 


THE LATCH KEY 

contains all the explanatory material which has been reserved for 
this book in order that no smallest note of adult or professional 
thought might mar the childlikeness of the other volumes. 

ART AND ARTISTS IN MY BOOK HOUSE. 

HATEVER material we have used throughout 
the collection we have invariably aimed to present 
from the child’s standpoint, so he would love the 
books. Accordingly, we have made much of the 
matter of illustrations and cover, by which the 
books first catch his attention and charm him 
through the eye. The influence of art for good 
has long been recognized, and the soul of the child 
filled full of the love for beauty has far less room to admit any ugli- 
ness than the soul of the child to whom hideousness seems natural. 

The same careful consideration given to the editorial prepara- 
tion of My BOOK HOUSE has been adhered to in its art. In the 
illustrations throughout there breathes a joyous childlikeness. The 
colors, while invariably interesting, are never flashy, gaudy or dis- 
quieting, but always harmonious and restful. The artists contrib- 
uting number many of our best known illustrators. They were, 
nevertheless, not selected for their prominence, but because of the 
strength of their individual appeal to the child, and their particular 
suitability to the subject' in hand. Thus, instead of letting any 
one artist do all the work, we have always selected the one par- 
ticularly suited to the special subject of each story and, as a result, 
My BOOK HOUSE is a remarkable collection of the work of 
America’s foremost illustrators for children, at their very best. 

To sum up everything, we have tried, as intelligently and lov- 
ingly as possible, in My BOOK HOUSE, to give the child the best 
literature obtainable, to gather it from a very wide variety of sources, 
covering many ages and many peoples, that his thought might 
sweep out broadly, to grade all this material as intelligently as we 
could, and to put it forth in such form that it would be irresistible. 

217 



MY BOOK HOUSE 





INDEX OF AUTHORS, TITLES 


*First edition jSecond edition 

acorn and the pumpkin, the — La Fontaine Ill: 290 

Acrisius # IV: 412 

across the fields — Anatole France I: 327 

address to new-made citizens, an — Woodrow Wilson V: 217 

Adrian Harley V; 228 

ADVENTURES OF ALEXANDER SELKIRK, THE IV : 328 

adventures of don quixote, the — Miguel de Cervantes, Arranged by 

Frances Jenkins Olcott V ; 90 

adventures of general tom thumb, the — Phineas T. Bamum ... IV: 163 

adventures of perseus, the — A Greek Myth IV: 412 

ADVENTURES OF YEHL AND THE BEAMING MAIDEN, THE — An Alaskan 

Legend Ill: 220 

Aeolus, God of the Wind V: 228 


Aesop 

245 
84 

372 
130 
157 

fill 
104 
178 
299 
160 
148 
146 
*342 
113 
119 
226 
252 

373 


ass in tne l^ion s OKin, i ne i 

Belling the Cat I 

Boy Who Cried Wolf, The I 

Crow and the Pitcher, The I 

Dog in the Manger, The I 

Donkey and the Lap-Dog, The I: *110 I 

Fox and the Stork, The I 

Frog and the Ox, The I 

Hare and the Tortoise, The I 

Jay and the Peacocks, The I 

Lion and the Mouse, The * I 

Milkmaid and Her Pail, The I 

Mountains That Labored, The II 

Two Crabs, The I 

Wind and the Sun, The I 

AFAR IN THE desert — T homas Pringle Ill 

Ahmed HI 

Akitoshi V 


2 18 



THE LATCH KEY 




\ 



AND IMPORTANT CHARACTERS 


Alcinous , King {See King Alcinous) 

Alcmene IV: 423 

Alcott, Louisa M. 

Little Gulliver IV: 85 

Alden, Raymond MacDonald 

Knights of the Silver Shield, The IV: 204 

Aldrich, Thomas Bailey 

Marjorie's Almanac II: 260 

Alfred, the Saxon V; 80 

Allen-a-dale V: 49 

Allingham, William 

Down on the Shore II: 122 

Song of the Leprechaun or Fairy Shoemaker II: f370 

Alma-Tadema, Laurence 

Strange Lands I: 161 

Alvar Fanez V: 316 

Amalekites , The IV: 402 

Amy Webber V: 107 

ANCIENT GAELIC SONGS 

Cuchulain, the Irish Hound V : 396 

Andersen, Hans Christian 

Emperor's New Clothes, The V : 75 

Ole-Luk-Oie I: f!32 

Snow Queen, The Ill : 303 

Swineherd, The IV: 270 

Thumbelisa II: 414 

What the Moon Saw I: 69 

What Else the Moon Saw I: 101 

Andromeda IV: 412 

A ngel of the Lord , The IV : 402 

Antinous V: 423 

Anton , Uncle IV: 251 


219 



MY BOOK HOUSE 


Apollo, Phoebus HI 

April — J ohn Galsworthy Ill 

arab to his horse, the — B ayard Taylor II 

Arabian Nights, The 

Magic Horse, The IV 

Story of the Talking Bird, The IV 

Archangel Michael V 

Archbishop Turpin V 

Archimago V 

Ariel’s song — W illiam Shakespeare II 

Aria IV 

Arthur, King ( See King Arthur) 

Arthur-a-bland V: 

ARUMAN, A HERO OF JAVA Ill: 

Arzang V: 

Asbjornsen, Peter Christen 

Squire’s Bride, The IV 

Ashiepattle II: *157 II 

Ass, The I 

ASS IN THE lion’s SKIN, THE — AeSOp I 

assembling of the fays, the — J oseph Rodman Drake Ill 

A sta Ill 

Augeus, King ( See King Augeus) IV 

Aulad, the Guide V 

Austin Wentworth V 

Avdyeeich, Martin IV 

Baba Yaga IV 

Babbitt, Ellen C. 

Sandy Road, The II: 

babe moses, the — T he Bible I : *420 I : 

BABE OF BETHLEHEM, THE — The Bible II: 

Babieca V : 

Babka Tanya II: 

Baby Gustavus Adolphus I: 

Baby Ray I : 

baby seed song — E dith Nesbit I: 

Bac, The Reindeer Ill: 

Bacon, Josephine Daskam 

Sleepy Song, The I : 

Late I: 

Bahman, Prince {See Prince Bahman) 

Bailey, Carolyn Sherwin 

Little Rabbit Who Wanted Red Wings, The I : 

Nutcracker and Sugardolly Stories, The II: 

Story of LiT Hannibal II: 

Baker , The I: 

Balloon, The IV: 

Balder (Norse god) V: 

Bannockburn — R obert Bums V: 

Barbara II: 

Barbary, King of II: 

Barber, The (Adventures of Don Quixote) V : 

barber’s, the — W alter de la Mare II: *89 II: 

Barnum, Phineas T. 

Adventures of General Tom Thumb, The I V : 

Baron Revendal V : 

Barr, Matthias 

Moon, So Round and Yellow I: 


268 

394 

313 

40 

57 

306 

300 

12 

369 

251 

49 

197 

436 


36 

J161 

245 

245 

11 

98 

432 

436 

228 

194 

26 


200 

f419 

300 

316 

218 

285 

71 

221 

303 


6 

f294 


151 

91 

138 

78 

117 

338 

289 

434 

329 

90 

J328 

163 

173 

68 


220 


THE LATCH KEY 


II: 


BARRY, A DOG OF THE ALPS II’ * 87 

Bates, Clara Doty 

Who Likes the Rain? j 

BATTLE OF THE FIREFLY AND THE APES* THE— A Filipino Tale ! ] ] II 

Bavaria , King of 

Bayan II 

Bay, J. Christian 

Marvelous Pot, The HI 

Bay Mare , The ' ’ * jy 

Bear, The (Snow-White and Rose-Red) ’ * ’ ’ u 

BEAUMAINS, SIR, THE KITCHEN KNIGHT V 

Beautiful Lassie , The HI 

Beautiful Princess , The ] . . Ill 

Beaver , The Ill 

Bee II: * 41 II 

Bee , The (Johnny and the Three Goats) I 

Beetle , Brazilian II 

Beetle, The Little Brown II 

Bele, King. ( See King Bele.) 

Bellicent, Queen V 

BELLING THE CAT — AeSOp I 

Bengal, Princess of IV 

Bengal, The Rajah of IV 

Benjamin V 

Bennett, Henry Holcomb 

Flag Goes By, The I 

Beowulf, the Geat V 

BETSEY ROSS AND THE FIRST AMERICAN FLAG II: *230 II 

Betty Ill 

“ ‘ * ' II 

V 


-Sarah Ome Jewett 


BEYOND THE TOLL-GATE- 

Bharat 

Bible, The 

Babe Moses, The 

Babe of Bethlehem, The 

Daniel in the Lions’ Den 

David and Goliath 

Feast of Tabernacles, The 

Gideon, the Warrior 

Joseph and His Brethren 

Noah’s Ark 

Psalm of David, A 

Psalm of Praise, A I: *419 

Big Bad Fox , The 

Big Beate 

Big, big coo, The 

Big Black Cat , The 

Big Boy, A 

Big Chief North Wind I: *340 

Big Crab , The 

Big Frog, The 

Big Gray Rat, The 

Big Orange Pumpkin, The 

Big Passenger Engine, The 

Big- Whiskers 

bikku matti — G udrun Thome-Thomsen — Translator 

Billiken 

Billy 



I 

II 
IV 

III 
II 

IV 
V 
I 

II 

I 

I 

I 

I 

I 

I 

I 
I 
I 

II 
I 
I 
I 

II 

III 

III 


t 88 

109 

82 

284 

218 

69 

36 

f35 

327 

399 

292 
117 

f 46 
f80 
128 
128 

327 

84 

40 

40 

294 

293 
413 

J293 

142 

434 

383 

f419 

300 

408 

257 

257 

402 

294 

295 
J256 
J423 

212 

425 

235 

115 

159 

J339 

113 

178 

128 

352 

193 

84 

394 

32 

105 


221 


MY BOOK HOUSE 


birches, the — W alter Pritchard Eaton II : 

bird of paradise, the — A Tale of Papua (New Guinea) . . .II:*151 II: 

Birds of Stymphalus, The IV: 

Bjornson, Bjornstjerne 

Oeyvind and Marit I 

Blackbird , The I 

Black Kitten, The I 

Black Sam (Mud Sam) V 

Black Shanghlan V 

Blacksmith, The I 

Blackthorn Ill 

Blacky the Crow I 

Blagden and Skeat 

Malayan Monkey Song, A Ill : 

Blake William 

Laughing Song, A I 

Nurse’s Song II 

Bluebird II 

blunder — L ouise E. Chollet II 

Blynken I: *324 I 

bells, the — E dgar Allen Poe Ill 

Bobby Coon I 

Bob-o-link Ill 

Book of Kings (Persian) 

Rustem, the Persian Hero V 

booms, the — S tewart Edward White IV 

Boots (Boots and His Brothers) I] 

Boots Ill 

boots and his brothers — S ir George Webb Dasent II 

Bosephus (Bo) II] 

bow that bridges heaven, the — C hristina G. Rossetti ] 

Boy, The ( The Strong Boy ) II] 

boy and the elf, the — S elma Lagerlof II] 

boy hero of harlem, the — A Legend of Holland I] 

boy of cadore, the — K atherine Dunlap Cather IV 

BOY WHO CRIED WOLF, THE — AeSOp ] 

boy who wanted the impossible, the — M ary Hayes Davis and Chow- 

Leung I 

BOYHOOD OF ROBERT FULTON, THE IV 

boy’s song, a — J ames Hogg Ill 

Bragi, the God of Poesy IV 

Brer Cottontail I 

Brer Fox II: *161 II 

Br'er Jaybird II 

Br'er Mocking Bird II 

Br'er Partridge I] 

Br'er Possum I] 

Brer Rabbit II] 

Brer Rabbit {A Story about the Little Rabbits) II: *161 II 

Br'er Rabbit ( The Story of Li' l' Hannibal ) II 

Br'er Robin . . I] 

Br'er Screech Owl I] 

Brer Wolf II] 

Briar-rose II] 

Bridge-keeper , The IV 

Bright Green and Gold Parrot, The I] 

brook song, the — J ames Whitcomb Riley II: * 52 I] 


229 

fl55 

423 

358 

171 

180 

107 

396 

92 

12 

375 

205 


284 

77 

22 

314 

tl41 

302 

375 

122 

436 

124 

237 

52 

237 

126 

298 

165 

408 

184 

276 

372 

388 
396 
105 
444 
375 
tl45 
138 
138 
138 
138 
237 
tl45 
138 
138 
138 
237 
26 
251 
128 
t 57 


222 


\ 


THE LATCH KEY 


. Ill: 

12 

. II: 

434 

. II: 

434 

. II: 

25 

II: 

58 

. II: 

302 

. IV: 

314 

. IV: 

283 

. II: 

112 


t 52 
285 


brooklet’s story, the— M argaret Sidney Lothrop II: *47 II: 

Brother Tom I: 

Brown, Abby Farwell 

Friends II: *160: II: 

Brownberry Ill: 

Browne, Frances 

Story of Fairyfoot, The Ill : 

Brown, Miss Rhody II: 

Brown, Miss Ruthy II : 

Brownie II : 

brownies in the toy shop, the — P almer Cox 
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett 

Child’s Thought of God, A II: 

Browning, Robert 

Cavalier Tune, A IV: 

Venice I V : 

Brush-tail II: 

Bryant, William Cullen 

March Ill: 

Planting of the Apple Tree, The II : *328 II : 

Robert of Lincoln Ill: 

bugle song, the — A lfred Tennyson V : 

Bullfrog Ill: 

Bumstead, Eudora 

“Wake-TJp” Story, The I: 71 

Burgess, Gelett 

Pert Fire Engine, The Ill : 64 

Purple Cow, The 1 : 240 

Steamboat and the Locomotive, The IV: 117 

Burgess, Thornton 

Peter Rabbit Decides to Change His Name I: 375 

Burns, Robert 

Bannockburn * V: 289 



Burroughs, John 

Winter Neighbors 

Butcher, The 

Butterfly 

Buzbuz 

Bynner, Witter 

Kids 

Byron, Lord 

Solitude 

Caesar Augustus 

Calypso 

Campbell Laura 

Peeny Pen Pone 

Cambridge, Duke of 

Campeador ( The Cid) . . 

cap that mother made, the — A Swedish Tale 

Captain of the Barclay 

Captain of the Guard , The 

Carman, Bliss 

Mr. Moon 

Carpenter, Mr 

Carroll, Lewis 

Mock Turtle’s Song, The 

Cashmere, Sultan of 


V: 

255 

I: 

t 78 

II: 

46 

III: 

32 

III: 

96 

IV: 

353 

II: 

30 0 

V: 

423 

II: 

182 

IV: 

163 

V: 

316 

II: 

12 

IV: 

354 

IV: 

40 

III: 

32 

I: 

352 

IV: 

150 

IV: 

40 


223 


MY BOOK HOUSE 


Cassiopeia , Queen IV 

Cassowary II: *151 I] 

Cat , The (i Gigi ) Ill 

Cat , 77tf [Belling the Cat) I 

Cat , (77te Ca/ and the Mouse) I 

cat and the mouse, the — A n English Folk Tale I 

cataract of lodore, the — R obert Southey Ill 

Catarina IV 

Caterpillar , The II: *41 II 

Cather, Katherine Dunlap 

Boy of Cadore, The IV: 

Duty That Was Not Paid, The Ill: 

Luck Boy of Toy Valley, The Ill : 

Catherine {Across the Fields) I: 

CAVALIER TUNE, a — R obert Browning IV: 

cavalier’s escape, the — W alter Thombury IV: 

Cawein, Madison 

In the Lane Ill : 

Twilight, The Ill: 

Cepheus, King {See King Cepheus.) 

Cerberus IV: 

Cervantes, Miguel de 

Surprising Adventures of Don Quixote, The (Arranged by Frances 

Jenkins Olcott) V: 

CHAMPA FLOWER, the — R abindranath Tagore I: 

Chanson de Roland 

Story of Roland, The V: 

Chapman, Arthur 

Plains' Call, The IV: 

Charles {Quick-running Squash) I : 

Charissa V: 

Charlemagne , Emperor V : 

Chaucer, Geoffrey 

Perfect Knight, A V: 

Cherry , Prince. {See Prince Cherry) 

Chestnut Kate IV: 

Chestnuts i II : 

Chet' l Ill: 

Chief Baker, The V: 

Chief Butler, The V: 

Chief Corn-Planter IV: 

Chief Minister, The HI: 

Chief of the Parrots II: *151 II: 

CHILD IN a MEXICAN garden, A— Grace A. Conkling II : *245 II : 

Children, The {Coming of the King) II : 

Children of Israel, The {The Babe Moses) I:* 420 I: 

Children of Israel, The {Gideon, the Warrior) I V : 

Children of the East, The IV: 

child’s PLAY — Laura E. Richards II: *145 II: 

child’s thought of god, a — E lizabeth Barrett Browning II: 

Chocolate Cat, A I: 

Chollet, Louise E. 

Blunder II: 

Chow-Leung & Mary Hayes Davis 

Boy Who Wanted the Impossible, The I: 

CHRISTENING THE BABY in RUSSIA — Arthur Ransome II : 

Christopher columbus, the story of — E lizabeth Harrison .... II : 


412 
fl55 
337 
84 
t78 
t78 
383 
276 
t 46 

276 

112 

106 

327 

314 

326 

95 

215 

423 


90 

*76 

300 

182 

201 

12 

300 

326 

326 
*57 
220 
294 
294 
363 
369 
fl55 
f 87 
74 
f419 
402 
402 
fl49 
302 
144 

314 

388 

218 

204 


224 


THE LATCH KEY 


Chulain, the Smith V: 

Cianne HI : 

cid AND HIS daughters, a tale of the — R etold from the Spanish 

Chronicles of the Cid V: 

Cid, The (Spanish Epic) 

Tale of the Cid and His Daughters, A V: 

Cinderella II : 

CINDERELLA — Adapted from Perrault II: 

• circus parade, the — O live Beaupre Miller II: 

city smoke — O live Beaupre Miller I: 

Clark, George Rogers IV: 

clocks of rondaine, the — F rank R. Stockton IV: 

cloud, the — P ercy Bysshe Shelley Ill : 

clouds (Mother Goose) I : 

CLOUDS AND waves — R abindranath Tagore I : 

Clown , The Ill: 

clytie — F lora J. Cooke II: 

clucking hen, the — A nn Hawkshawe (Aunt Effie) I: * 78 I: 

Clymene Ill : 

coaly-bay, the outlaw horse — E rnest Thompson Seton V : 

Cobbler, The IV: 

cobwebs I: 

Cock, The ( The Cock, the Mouse and the Little Hen) I: 

Cock, The ( The Sheep and the Pig That Made a Home) I: 

cock, the mouse and the little red hen, the — F elicite Le Fevre . I: 

COCK DOTH CROW, THE — Nursery Rhyme I: 

Cockatoo II: *151 II: 

Coleridge, Samuel 

He Prayeth Best II : 

COLUMBINE AND HER PLAYFELLOWS OF THE ITALIAN PANTOMIME . . . Ill: 

Columbus, Christopher II: 

Comb, Polly II : 

come little leaves — G eorge Cooper I: 

coming of the king, the — L aura E. Richards II: 

Concobar MacNessa, King ( See King Concobar MacNessa) 

Conkling, Grace Hazard 

Child in a Mexican Garden, A . .. II: *245 II: 

Cooke, Edmund Vance 

Moo-Cow-Moo I: *294 I: 


Cooke, Flora J. 

Clytie 

cooky, the — Laura E. Richards . . 

Cooky, The North Wind’s 

Coolidge, Susan 

Secret Door, The 

Cooper, George 

Come Little Leaves 

October's Party 

Copperfield, David 

Corrigan 

Cotton-Tail Rabbit 

Countryman, The 

Cow, The 

Cow-boy, The 

Cowherd’s Wife, The 

Cox, Palmer 

Brownies in the Toy Shop, The 
cradle song — Elizabeth Prentiss . 


II: 

I: 

II: 

IV: 

I: 

II: 

IV: 

IV: 

I: 

II: 

I: 

IV: 

V: 

II: 

I: 


396 

348 

316 

316 
J6.S 
165 
386 
427 
390 
251 
273 
106 
107 
354 
123 
t 83 
268 
218 
251 
231 
212 
279 
212 
*83 
fl55 

76 

354 

204 

133 

*326 

74 


t 87 
f234 

123 

*232 

411 

315 


f326 

*57 

98 

124 

186 

*342 

121 

142 

80 


58 

18 


225 


MY BOOK HOUSE 



Craik, Dinah Maria Muloch 
Shaking of the Pear-Tree, The 
Crandall, C. H. 


credit to the school, a — Dikken Zwilgmeyer 
Creep 


Cricket 

Croker, T. Crofton 


Crow , The (The Crow and the Pitcher) 


Daddy 


Dame Celia 


Dancing Bear, The 
Dandelion, The . 


Darius, King. ( See King Darius.) 
Dasaratha. ( See King Dasaratha.) 
Dasent, Sir George Webb 


Davis, Mary Hayes and Chow-Leung 
Boy Who Wanted the Impossible, The 
Davy 


De Beaumont, Madame La Princess 


Deer 


DICK WHITTINGTON AND HIS CAT 

Dickens, Charles 


. Ill: 

142 

. IV 

123 

. V 

337 

. Ill 

98 

. I 

150 

. IV 

390 

I 

f326 

. Ill 

74 

. II 

63 

. I 

130 

. I 

130 

. V 

396 

I 

386 

. IV 

412 

. V 

12 

. V 

107 

. II 

19 

. Ill 

126 

. I 

101 

I 

109 

. IV 

408 

III 

74 

. I 

100 

. II 

237 

. Ill 

52 

. Ill 

211 

. V 

306 

. Ill 

257 

. IV 

98 

. I 

388 

. IV 

85 

. Ill 

267 

. IV 

213 

. IV 

213 

. IV 

213 

L3 I 

f322 

. IV 

275 

. Ill 

326 

. IV 

315 

. V 

396 

. II 

69 

. V 

436 

. IV 

57 

. IV 

57 

. Ill 

422 

. IV 

423 

. II 

329 

. IV: 98 

. Ill: 

130 


226 



THE LATCH KEY 


Dickinson, Emily 

Day, A Ill 

Dictys IV 

Diego HI 

Diego Gonzales (Infante of Carrion) V 

Dillingham, Elizabeth Thompson 

Hallowe'en Story, A I 

Dingo II 

Dirk Waldron V 

Dobbin Ill 

Dobrunka Ill 

Dock HI 

Dr. Knipperhausen (High German Doctor) V 

Dodder Ill 

Dodge, Mary Mapes 

Going to London I 

What They Say I: *91 I 

Nell and Her Bird I 

Snow I:* 165 I 

Night and Day . . I: *424 I 

Who Can Crack Nuts? II 

Dog, The (The Dog in the Manger) I 

Dog, The (Gigi) Ill 

DOG IN THE MANGER, THE — Aesop I 

Doges, The IV 

doll i* the grass — A Norse Folk Tale II: *157 II 

DOLL UNDER THE BRIAR ROSEBUSH, THE — Jorgen Moe I 

Don Alfonso, King V 

DONKEY AND THE LAP-DOG, THE — AeSOp I: *110 I 

Donkey-man, The I 

Don Quixote V 

Dona Elvira V 

Doorkeeper, The IV 

Dona Sol V 

Dona Ximena V 

Dormouse, The I 

Dove, The I 

down on the shore — W illiam Allingham II 

Downy Woodpecker, The V 

Dracul, the Wizard Ill 

Dragon, The V 

Drahman Ill 


Drake, Joseph Rodman 

Assembling of the Fays, The 

Dream-man 

Drum, The I: * 91 

Duck, The (Who Likes the Rain?) 

Duck, The (The Little Red Hen and the Grain of Wheat) 

duck and the kangaroo, the — Edward Lear 

ducks' ditty — Kenneth Grahame 

Duessa 

Dunois 

Dutch, The 

DUTY THAT was not paid, the — Katherine Dunlap Cather 

Dwarf, The 

Dwarf , The 


Ill 

II 

I 

I 

I 

I 

II 

V 

V 
I 

III 

V 
II 


267 

412 

154 

316 

352 

112 

107 

82 

145 

242 

107 

242 

75 
t 87 
103 
fl62 


157 

337 

157 

283 

|161 

425 

316 

fill 

395 

90 
316 
251 
316 
316 
432 
295 
122 
255 
376 

12 

197 

11 
314 
t 87 
109 

60 

373 

111 

12 

306 

334 

112 

12 

91 


227 


MY BOOK HOUSE 


Eagle, The 

Earl Angantyr, Lord of the Orkneys 

east Indian cradle song, an — S arojini Naidu 

Ramayana, The, the Sacred Poem of India 

Exile of Rama, The 

east o’ the sun and west o’ the moon — A Norse Fairy Tale . . . 

East Wind , The 

Eaton, Walter Pritchard 

Birches, The 

Edward I. (King of England) 

Eel, The 

Eels, Elsie Spicer 

How Night Came 

How the Brazilian Beetles Got Their Gorgeous Coats 

Effie, Aunt (Ann Hawkshawe) 

Clucking Hen, The I: *78 

Efim Shevelef 

Egypt, The King of 

Elephant 

Elf, The (The Boy and the Elf) 

elf and the dormouse, the — Oliver Herford 

Eliot, George 

Maggie Tulliver Goes to Live with the Gypsies 

Elisha Bodruf 

Ellen 

Elli 

Ellide 

elsa and the ten elves — A Swedish Fairy Tale 

Elves, The 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo 

We Thank Thee 

Emily 

Emperor, The (The Swineherd) 

emperor’s new clothes, the — H ans Christian Andersen 

enchanted island, the — H oward Pyle 

Erymanthian Boar, The 

Esther, Aunt I: *268 

Eurystheus, King of Mycenae 

EVENING AT the farm — J ohn Townsend Trowbridge 

Ewing, Juliana Horatia 

Owl’s Answer to Tommy, The 

exile of rama, the — R etold from the Ramayana, the Sacred Poem of 

India 

explanation of the grasshopper, an — Vachell Lindsay 

Fables 

Acorn and the Pumpkin, The (La Fontaine) 

Ass in the Lion's Skin, The (Aesop) 

Belling the Cat (Aesop) 

Boy Who Cried Wolf, The (Aesop) 

Crow and the Pitcher, The (Aesop) 

Dog in the Manger, The (Aseop) 

Donkey and the Lap-Dog, The (Aesop) I: *110 

Foolish, Timid, Little Hare, The (East Indian) 

Fox and the Stork (Aesop) 

Frog and the Ox, The (Aesop) 

Hare and the Tortoise, The (Aesop) 

Honest Woodman, The (La Fontaine) 


III: 

74 

V: 

338 

I: 

*77 

V: 383 

III: 

399 

III: 

399 

II: 

229 

V: 

281 

II: 

112 

III: 

211 

II: 

128 

I 

f 83 

V 

152 

III 

262 

II 

69 

III 

408 

I 

432 

IV 

213 

V 

152 

V 

49 

IV 

436 

V 

338 

II 

251 

I 

346 

II 

259 

I 

284 

IV 

270 

V 

75 

IV 

12 

IV 

423 

I 

J269 

IV 

423 

IV 

142 

II: 

25 

V: 

: 383 

II: 34 

III 

290 

I 

245 

I 

84 

I 

372 

I 

130 

I 

157 

I 

till 

II 

69 

I 

104 

I 

178 

I 

299 

II 

78 


228 


THE LATCH KE 


Fables continued 


Jay and the Peacocks, The (Aesop) 

Lion and the Mouse, The (Aesop) 

Milkmaid and Her Pai), The (Aesop) 

Sandy Road, The (A Jataka Tale) 

Turtle Who Could Not Stop Talking, The (East Indian) 
Fabre, J. Henri 

Story of a Spider, The (Narbonne Lycosa) 

Fairy , The (The Fairy Who Judged Her Neighbors) . . . . 

FAIRY AND child — E ugene Field 

Fairy Candide 

fairy forests — A lfred Noyes 

Fairy Fortunata 

Fairy Godmother 

Fairy Honeymouth 

Fairy of the Meadows , The 

Fairy Tales ( see Fairy Tales under Special Subjects Index) 
FAIRY WHO JUDGED HER NEIGHBORS, THE — Jean IngeloW . . 

Fairyfoot (Augustus) 

Faithful Swineherd , The 

Fanny (Toads and Diamonds) 

farewell to the farm — R obert Louis Stevenson 

Farmer , The (The Three Sillies) 

Farmer , The (The Cat and the Mouse) 

Farmer , The (The Little Gray Pony) 

Farmer , The (The Donkey and the Lap-Dog) 

Farmer Blaize 

Farmer Brown 

farmer’s boy, the — O ld Rhyme 

Farmer's Daughter , The (The Squire’s Bride) 

Farmer's Daughter , The (The Three Sillies) 

Farmer's Wife, The (The Three Sillies) 

Farragut, David 

Father (How the Home was Built) 

Father (A Happy Day in the City) 

Father Bear 

Fatima 

Faulkner, Georgene 

Month of March, The 

Fauns # 

feast of tabernacles, the — A dapted from the Bible . . . 

Felez Munoz 

Ferdinand ( See King Ferdinand) 

Fergus MacRoy _ 

Ferrando Gonzales (Infante of Carrion) 


I: *313 


.II: *353 


I: *110 


I: *87 


Fidelia 

Fidessa 

Field-Mouse, The 

Field, Eugene 

Fairy and Child 

Sugar Plum Tree 

Wynken, Blynken and Nod 

Finch, The 

Finnish Epic, Kalevala 

Kalevala, Land of Heroes 

Fire, The . 

Firouz Schah, Prince {See Prince Firouz Schah) 
Fish, The 


I: *313 
T: *324 



I 

I 

I 

II 

I 

IV 

II 

I 

III 

III 

III 

II 

II 

III 

II: 

III: 

V: 

II: 

II: 

IV: 

I: 

I: 

I: 

V: 

I: 

I: 

IV: 

IV: 

IV: 

IV: 

I: 

I: 

I: 

II: 

III: 

V: 

II: 

V: 

V 

V 

V 

V 
II 

I 

I 
I 

II 

V 
I 

IV 

II 



160 

148 

146 

200 

222 

189 

358 

f322 

326 

236 

154 

165 

91 
376 

358 
12 

423 

f323 

217 

80 

t78 

92 
till 

228 

146 

f90 

36 

80 

80 

354 

285 

396 

248 

308 

348 

12 

257 

316 

396 

316 

12 

12 

414 

f322 

144 

fl41 

22 

359 
304 

40 

191 


229 


MY BOOK HOUSE 


fisherman who caught the sun, the — A Hawaiian Legend Ill: 206 

Fishermen Three , The I: *324 I: fl41 

Fitzwarren , Alice II: 329 

Fitzwarren , Mr II: 329 

flag goes by, the — H enry Holcomb Bennett 1 : 293 

Fleecefold Ill: 12 

Flop sy Rabbit I: 186 

Flying-fox II: 112 

fog, the — C arl Sandburg Ill: 251 

Folk Tales 

Adventures of Yehl (Alaskan) Ill: 220 

Tale of a Black Cat, The (American) I: 115 

Shingebiss (American Indian) 1 : 339 

Legend of the Water Lily, The (American Indian) . . .II: *118 II: fl 17 

Man Who Loved Hai Quai, The (American Indian) Ill: 216 

LiT Hannibal (American Negro) II: 138 

Story About the Little Rabbits, A (American Negro) .II: *161 II: fl45 

How Brer Rabbit Met Brer Tar Baby (American Negro) . . . Ill: 237 

Gingerbread Man, The (American, New England) I: 121 

Magic Horse, The (Arabian) IV: 40 

Story of the Talking Bird (Arabian) IV: 57 

Right Time to Laugh, The (Australian) II: 112 

Twelve Months, The (Bohemian) Ill: 145 

How the Brazilian Beetles Got Their Gorgeous Coats (Brazilian) II: 128 

How Night Came (Brazilian) Ill: 211 

Strong Boy, The (Canadian) Ill: 165 

Boy Who Wanted the Impossible, The (Chinese) 1 : 388 

Girl Who Used Her Wits, The (Chinese) II: 271 

Through a Mouse-hole (Czech) Ill : 384 

Marvelous Pot, The (Danish) Ill: 69 

Rhodopis and Her Little Gilded Sandals (Egyptian) Ill: 262 

Cat and the Mouse, The (English) I: f78 

Goldilocks and the Three Bears (English) 1 : 248 

Little Red Hen and the Grain of Wheat, The (English) .... 1 : 60 

Magpie's Nest, The (English) I: 171 

Teeny Tiny (English) 1 : 336 

Dick Whittington and His Cat (English) II: 329 

Jack and the Beanstalk (English) II: 371 

Master of All Masters (English) II: 410 

Story of Tom Thumb, The (English) II: 262 

Meiilot (English) Ill: 242 

Wise Men of Gotham, The (English) Ill: 82 

Three Sillies, The (English) I V : 80 

Battle of the Firefly and the Apes, The (Filipino) II: 82 

How the Finch Got Her Colors (Flemish) II: 22 

Cinderella (French) II: 165 

Toads and Diamonds (French) II: *353 II: f323 

Prince Cherry (French) Ill : 326 

Little Girl and the Hare, The (German) I: 241 

Shoemaker and the Elves, The (German) 1 : 346 

Fisherman and His Wife, The (German) ........... II: 191 

Snow-white and Rose-red (German) II: f35 

Twelve Dancing Princesses (German) II: 176 

Hansel and Grethel (German). \ Ill : 45 

Golden Bird, The (German) Ill: 292 

Six Swans, The (German) Ill: 363 


230 


THE LATCH KEY 


Folk Tales continued 

Sleeping Beauty, The (German) II] 

Fisherman Who Caught the Sun, The (Hawaiian) II] 

Daniel O’Rourke (Irish) II] 

Gigi and the Magic Ring (Italian) . II] 

Month of March, The (Italian) II] 

Tongue-Cut Sparrow, The (Japanese) I] 

Moon-Maiden, The (Japanese) II] 

Amman, A Hero of Java (Javanese) II] 

Ragged Pedlar, The (Jewish) II] 

Pigling (Korean) Ill 

Sheep and the Pig That Made a Home, The (Norse) I 

Johnny and the Three Goats (Norse) I 

Boots and His Brothers (Norse) II 

Doll i’ the Grass (Norse) II: *157 II 

East o’ the Sun and West o’ the Moon (Norse) Ill 

Why the Sea Is Salt (Norse) Ill 

Princess on the Glass Hill, The (Norse) HI 

Squire’s Bride, The (Norse) IV 

Bird of Paradise, The (Papuan) . . .II: *151 II 

How the Waterfall Came to the Thirsting Mountain (Roumanian) III 

Little Snow Maiden, The (Russian) II: *293 II 

Good Comrades of the Flying Ship, The (Russian) HI 

Little Man As Big As Your Thumb (Russian) IV 

Wee Robin’s Christmas Song (Scotch) I: *166 1 

Wee, Wee Mannie and the Big, Big Coo, The (Scotch) I 

Two Bad Bargains (Servian) Ill 

Lost Spear, The (South African) Ill 

Little Half-Chick (Spanish) I 

Three Wishes, The (Spanish) Ill 

Cap That Mother Made, The (Swedish) II 

Elsa and the Ten Eives (Swedish) II 

Tudur ap Einion (Welsh) Ill 

Fool , The : Ill 

foolish, timid little hare, the — An Eastern Indian Tale II 

Foreign Gentleman , The Ill 

Forest Folk , The 

Foulke, Elizabeth F. 


Ikwa and Annowee 


II: 


Four Bad Little Foxes , The I : 

Fow Chow II: 

Fox , The (The Golden Bird) HI: 

Fox , The (Johnny and the Three Goats) . . I: 

Fox , The (The Fox and the Stork) I : 

FOX AND THE STORK, THE — AeSOp I : 

Fradubio V: 

Fraelissa V : 

France, Anatole 

Across the Fields I* 

Frances , Aunt !'• 

Franz • HI* 

Frau Quixano V: 

Freeman, Mary E. Wilkins 

Where Sarah Jane’s Doll Went Ill 

Freight Engine , The I 

Friar Tuck V 

friends — A bbie Farwell Brown II: *160 II 

Frisky I : *268 I 


26 
206 
74 
337 
348 
63 
179 
197 
252 
191 
279 
f80 
237 
f 161 
399 
159 
52 
36 
fl55 
376 
f230 
184 
26 
f 163 
235 
369 
228 
304 
154 
12 
251 
395 



327 

396 

106 

173 




MY BOOK HOUSE 


frithjof the viking — R etold from the Norse Saga of Frith jof ... V: 
FROG AND THE OX, THE — AeSOp I : 

Frogbit Ill: 

Fulton , Robert I V : 

Funny Old Gentleman, The II: 

Galsworthy, John 

April Ill: 

Ganelon V : 

Gareth V : 

Garland, Hamlin 

Night Ride in a Prairie Schooner, A IV: 

Gautier, Judith 

Memoirs of a White Elephant, The IV: 

Geat-men, The V: 

Geese , The (The Turtle Who Could not Stop Talking) I: 

General , The (Bikku Matti) II: 

Gentleman , The (The Three Sillies) IV : 

George-a-Green V : 

Gerda Ill : 

GEORGE ROGERS CLARK AND THE CONQUEST OF THE NORTHWEST — Theo- 
dore Roosevelt IV 

Gertrude (Hansel and Grethel) Ill 

Gessler V 

Gew V 

Ghost , The (Adventures of Punch and Judy) Ill 

Giant, The Selfish II 

Giants, The (The Knights of the Silver Shield) IV 

GIDEON, THE WARRIOR IV 

Gideon IV 

gigi and the magic ring — A nne Macdonell Ill 

Giles Jinkson (The Bantam) V 

Qillespy, Frances Bliss 

Mother Spider I: 

Gilo 1 the White Hand V: 

Gingerbread Dog, A I : 

gingerbread man, the — A New England Folk Tale I: 

girl who used her wits, the — A Chinese Folk Tale II: 

Glegg, Aunt IV: 

Glegg, Uncle IV: 

Gloriana, Queen of Faeryland V : 

Goat, The (Oeyvind and Marit) I : 

God Thor, The IV: 

Goddess of Spring, The IV : 

going a-nutting — E dmund Clarence Stedman IV : 

going to London — M ary Mapes Dodge I : 

going to see grandmama — K ate Greenaway I : 

Gold Key, A I: *112 I: 

Gold Lily Ill: 

Golden Bird, The Ill: 

Golden Horse, The Ill: 

golden touch, the — N athaniel Ha wthome Ill: 

goldfinch, the — O dell Shepard II: 

goldilocks and the three bears — A n English Folk Tale I: 

Goldsmith, Oliver 

Little Goody Two-Shoes II: 

Goliath Ill: 

Good Biddy I : 

Good Chips I: 


232 


to >-*■ KJ to to to 4^ rf*. c*> tOtOtOOM to too^^rf^toto^^to (ji 01 OJ to 4*. h-* I-*. OJOlOJ 4 ^. OJ to (-*■ C*J 

<1 O Cn OJ ^tOvj'O'OO'— ‘Uio^i^^CflooootOi^^tO tOOoOOO^OJCri'O^'O O 4^ 00 O to h* Ut 00 to O O h* O 4^ O 

OOCN>4-*tOtOOOOQOCn^OOOOJOOtOCK>OJ>— *•>— *■4^4300 00 -O to to 4^ ON Go O' O Cn O C*> '•O © 4 ^. to C*» to C*> viq4> © O' to 00 00 


THE LATCH KEY 


GOOD COMRADES 
Good Cow . . . 
Good Folk , The 
Good King , The 
Good Pump . . 
Good Tree . . . 
Goody .... 


OF THE FLYING ship, the— A Russian Tale 


II: 


Goose , The (The Sheep and the Pig That Made a Home) 


Governor , The (White Aster) 
Grahame, Kenneth 

Ducks’ Ditty, The . . 


Grandfather , The (Little Nell and Mrs. Jarley’s Wax Works) . 

Grandfather Vavil 

Grandma (Jamie Watt) II : 

Grandmother (How the Home was Built) 


Grandmother Spider 
Granny 


Grasshopper, The (The Fairy Who Judged Her Neighbors) 

GRASSHOPPER GREEN 

Grasshopper Green (Mother Spider) 

Great Bird , The 


Great Sea Serpent, 
Great Spirit, The ( 


The 


Green, Jotham . . 
Green Knight, The 
Greenaway, Kate 


Little Wind 


Grendel 


Griffis, William Eliot 

Pigling and Her Proud Sister 
Grimm, Wilhelm and Jacob 

Snow-White and Rose-Red . 
Fisherman and His Wife, The 
Stories also found in Grimm: 

Little Girl and the Hare, The 
Shoemaker and the Elves, The 


Gumph, Christopher 


. . Ill 

184 


71 

. . Ill 

32 

. . Ill 

326 


71 


71 

*353 II 

f323 

. . II 

133 

. . I 

279 

. . IV 

193 

. . V 

373 

. . II 

111 

. . II 

394 

. . Ill 

130 

. . Ill 

182 

*147 II 

1 15 1 

. . I 

285 

. . II 

394 

. . II 

*53 

. . I 

226 

. . II 

25 

. . II 

34 

. . II 

358 

. . I 

226 

. . I 

228 

. . II 

22 

. . II 

112 

. . Ill 

211 

. . Ill 

216 

. . V 

436 

. . IV 

315 

. . V 

327 

. . I 

58 

. . I 

59 

. . I 

59 

. . V 

413 

. . V 

413 

. . Ill 

45 

III 

: 191 

. . II: 

f35 

. . II: 

191 

. . I 

241 

. . I 

346 

. . II 

176 

. . Ill 

45 

. . Ill 

26 

. . Ill 

292 

. . Ill 

363 

. . IV 

98 

. . IV 

98 

. . IV 

396 

. . II 

251 


23 3 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

Gurney , Ruth ....... Ill: 86 

Guthrum . V: 80 

Gypsies , The IV: '213 

Half dan . V: 338 

Hall, Sarah Joseph a 

Mary Had a Little Lamb 1 : 254 

Hallowe’en story, a — E lizabeth Thompson Dillingham I: 352 

Haroun-Alraschid IV: 56 

Hamilton , Governor IV: 390 

Hammerheel Ill: 12 

Hannibal, LiT II: 138 

Hans II: 184 

HANSEL AND GRETHEL Ill: 45 

happy day in the city, a — O live Beaupre Miller 1 : 396 

Hare, The (Johnny and the Three Goats) I: 80 

Hare, The (The Little Girl and the Hare) I: 241 

Hare, The (The Hare and the Tortoise) I: 299 

Harlequin Ill: 354 

hare and the tortoise, the — A esop 1 : 299 

Harweda, Prince ( See Prince Harweda) 

Harp, The (Jack and the Beanstalk) II: 371 

Harris, Joel Chandler 

A Story About Little Rabbits II: *161 II: fl45 

Harrison, Elizabeth 

The Story of Christopher Columbus II: 204 

Prince Harweda and the Magic Prison Ill: 34 

HASSAN, THE ARAB, AND HIS HORSE I J S 308 

Hastings • . V : 80 

Hawk, The I: *166 I: fl63 

Hawkshawe, Ann (Aunt Effie) 

Clucking Hen, The I: * 78 I: t 83 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel 

Golden Touch, The Ill : 274 

Heidi in the Alpine Pasture — J ohanna Spyri II: 277 

Helen I: *315 I: f313 

Helena Ill: 369 

Helge V: 338 

Hendry, Hamish 

White Horses Ill: 158 

henny penny — S arah E. Wiltse I: *79 

Henrietta (Hexie) IV: 315 

Henry, Governor Patrick IV : 390 

he prayeth best — S amuel T. Coleridge II: 76 

her dairy — P eter Newell Ill: 81 

Hercules - IV: 423 

Herford, Oliver 

Elf and the Dormouse, The 1 : 432 

Hermes V: 423 

Herod II: 300 

Hermit, The (White Aster) V: 373 

Herr Pappelmeister V: 173 

Hiawatha (Hiawatha's Childhood) II: 431 

Hiawatha (Hiawatha’s Fasting) IV: 381 

Hiawatha's Brothers .......... II: 431 

Hiawatha's Chickens II: 431 

Hiawatha’s childhood — H enry Wadsworth Longfellow II: 431 

Hiawatha’s fasting — H enry Wadsworth Longfellow IV: 381 


234 


THE LATCH KEY 


Hickson, William E. 


Hindu , The IV: 

Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons IV: 

Hirschvogel IV : 

Hit the Mark Ill : 

Hjalmer I : 

Hobgoblin, The Ill: 

Hodge HI: 

Hoenir, Brother of Odin IV : 

Hogg, James 

Boy’s Song, A Ill: 105 

Holland, Josiah Gilbert 

Rockaby-Lullaby 1 : 8 

home-coming of ulysses, the — O dyssey of Homer V : 423 

honest woodman, the — A dapted from La Fontaine II 

Honey-bug Ill 

Honeysuckers ; II:. *151 II 

Hood, Thomas 

Precocious Piggy II: *132 I 

Horatio , The Old Black Bear Ill 

Hornbill II: *151 II 

Hot Cockalorum . \ II 

how beowulf delivered heorot — R etold from the Old English Epic, 

Beowulf V 

HOW BRER RABBIT MET BRER TAR-BABY HI 

how night came — E lsie Spicer Eels Ill 

HOW THE BRAZILIAN BEETLES GOT THEIR GORGEOUS COATS — Elsie 

Spicer Eels II 

how the finch got her colors — A Flemish Tale II 

how the goddess of spring came to scoring — C harles Kingsley . . IV 

how the home was built — M aud Lindsay I 

HOW THE WATERFALL CAME TO THE THIRSTING MOUNTAIN — A Rouma- 


III: 

44 

I: 

200 

II: 

410 



nian Fairy Tale 

Howitt, Mary 

Sea Gull, The 

Howells, William Dean 

Pony Engine and the Pacific Express, The 

Hrothgar, King of the Scyldings 

Hubba 

Hugi 

Hulbert, William Davenport 

Story of a Beaver, The 

humming bird, the — Edward Markham . . . 

Humphrey 

Hunchbacked Maid , The 

Hunter, The 

Hurricane 

I am A gold lock — Nursery Rhyme 

i wouldn’t be a growler — Mary Mapes Dodge 

Iagoo 

Iduna, Spirit of Spring 

ikwa and annowee — Elizabeth E. Foulke . . 

Ilmarinen 

Imp, The 


, ... Ill 

. . . . IV 

II: *343 II 
. . . . V 

. . . . V 
. . . . IV 

. ... Ill 
. ... Ill 
. ... IV 
. . . . V 

. ... Ill 
. ... Ill 
. I: *112 I 
. . . . I 

. . . . IV 

. . . . IV 

. . . . II 

. . . . V 

. ... Ill 


376 

84 

f342 

413 

80 

436 

117 

289 

315 

383 

216 

174 

fllO 

159 

381 

444 

388 

358 

165 


235 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

in the lane — M adison Cawein Ill : 95 

Indian children — A nnette Wynne II: *117 II: fl21 

Indians (Legend of the Water Lily) II: *118 II: tH7 

Indians (George Rogers Clark and the Conquest of the Northwest) . IV : 390 

Ingeborg the Fair V: 338 

Ingelow, Jean 

Fairy Who Judged Her Neighbors, The II: 358 

in Columbus’ time — A nnette Wynne II: 216 

Iolaus IV : 423 

Irascible Sacristan, The IV: 251 

Irving, Washington 

Wolf ert Webber, or Golden Dreams V: 107 

Isaac , Uncle Ill: 98 

Isabella, Queen II: 204 

Ishmaelites, The V: 942 

Israel (Jacob) V: 294 

Israelites , The . . . II: 257 

it — J ames Whitcomb Riley I: 179 

Ivan IV: 26 

Jacob , ( Israel) V: 294 

Jacobs, Joseph 

Master of All Masters II: 410 

Three Sillies, The IV: 80 

Jack (Across the Fields) I: 327 

Jack (Jack and the Beanstalk) II: 371 

jack frost — G abriel Setoun I: 210 

Jack-in-box , The II: 58 

Jack-o’-lantern, The {Halloween Story) 1 : 352 

Jack-o’-lantern (Blunder) II: 314 

Jack-o’-lantern (Judging by Appearances) II: 175 

Jackson, Helen Hunt 

Letter from a Cat, A I: *315 I: f313 

James I: 201 

JAMIE WATT AND HIS GRANDMOTHER’S TEA KETTLE II: *147 II: fl51 

Jarley, Mrs Ill: 130 

Java, The King of Ill: 197 

JAY AND THE PEACOCKS, THE — AeSOp 1 : 160 

Jenny Wren I: *166 I: fl63 

Jerry Muskrat I: 375 

Jesse Ill: 257 

Jesus II: 300 

Jewel- Without- A -Price IV: 26 

Jewett, Sarah Orne 

Beyond the Toll-Gate II : 434 

Joanna . Ill: 154 

joan of arc, the story of — F rench History V : 306 

Joe West Ill: 86 

jog on — W illiam Shakespeare I: 16 

Johan Ill: 106 

John (A Hallowe’en Story) I: 352 

johnny and the three goats — A Norse Tale I: |80 

Jimmy Skunk I: 375 

Johnny Blossom Ill: 98 

Johnson, Caleb (Boyhood of Robert Fulton) IV : 396 

Johnson, Clifton * 

Tale of a Black Cat, The I: 115 

Johnson, Colonel IV: 363 


236 


THE LATCH KEY 


Jordan, David Starr 

Ogre That Played Jackstraws, The Ill 

Joseph II 

JOSEPH AND HIS BRETHREN — The Bible V 

Jove V 

Judah V 


JUDGING BY APPEARANCES- 

Judy 

Jupiter 


-Emilie Poulsson II 

Ill 

Ill 


Kaikeyi, Queen V 

Kaikous , Shah of Persia V 

Kang Wa Ill 

kalevala, land of heroes — R etold from the Kalevala, the National 

Epic of Finland V 

Kangaroo , The (The Duck and the Kangaroo) I 

Kangaroo , The (The Right Time to Laugh) II 

Kathleen V 

Katinka Ill 

Kausalya, Queen V 

Kay Ill 

Keats, John 

Meg Merrilies IV 

Keeper of the Sultan's Garden , The IV 

key of the kingdom, the — N ursery Rhyme I 

Khosroo Shah , Sultan IV 

kids — W itter Bynner Ill 

Kilmer, Joyce 

Trees V 

Kindly Teacher , The Ill 

King, The (The Golden Bird) Ill 

King, The (Wee Robin’s Christmas Song) I: *166 I 

King, The (Clytie) II 

King, The (Coming of the King) II 

King, The (The Six Swans) Ill 

King, The (The Twelve Dancing Princesses) II 

King Alcinous V 

King Alfred 

Hymn of Alfred's, A V 

King Alfred, the Saxon V 

King Arthur 11:262 V 

King Augeus IV 

King Bele V 

King Cepheus IV 

King Concobar Mac Nessa V 

King Darius IV 

King Dasaratha V 

King Ferdinand II 

Kingfishers H: *151 II 

King Lion II 

King Lot ....... , V 

King Louis Philippe ^1 V 

II 
I 

V 

V 

V 


King Midas 

King of the Heavens II: 151 

King Over Egypt ^ I : *420 

King Ring 

King Sualtam .... 

King Yucef of Morocco 



174 
300 
294 
423 
294 

175 
438 
268 
383 
436 
191 

359 

373 

112 

173 

145 

383 

303 

212 

57 

99 

57 

96 

263 
85 
292 
f 1 63 
123 
74 
363 

176 
423 

89 
80 
327 
423 
33g 
412 
396 
408 
383 
204 
fl55 
69 
327 
163 
274 
1 155 
f419 
338 
396 
316 


237 


MY BOOK HOUSE 


Kingsley, Charles 

How the Goddess of Spring Came to Scoring IV: 448 

King's Cook , The I: 304 

King's Son, The II: 176 

King's Son, The (Opportunity) V: 337 

kitten and falling leaves, the — W illiam Wordsworth I: 185 

knights of the silver shield, the — R aymond MacDonald Alden . IV : 204 

Knights of the Sword, The Ill: 376 

Kookoo II: 388 

Kra Ill: 205 

Krout, Mary H. 

Little Brown Hands II: *255 

labors of Hercules, the — A Greek Myth IV : 423 

Ladies-in-Waiting, The IV: 270 

lady-bug — C hinese Nursery Rhymes, Tr. Isaac T. Headland .... I: 394 

Lady by the Roadside, A I: 235 

Lady in White, The II: 78 

Lady Lyonors V: 327 

Laeg V : 396 

La Fontaine 

Acorn and the Pumpkin, The Ill : 290 

Honest Woodman, The II: 78 

Lagerlof, Selma 

Boy and the Elf, The Ill: 408 

Ldkshman V : 383 

Lola, Princess ( See Princess Lala) 

Lamb, The I: 254 

Lap-dog, The I: *110 I: fill 

Lapp Woman, The Ill: 303 

Larcom, Lucy 

Sir Robin . I: 114 

Lark II: 358 

Lars II: 12 

late — J osephine Preston Peabody I: t294 

laughing song A — William Blake I: 284 

Lau-Mai I: 388 

Lazarus, Emma 

New Colossus, The V: 172 

Lear, Edward 

Duck and the Kangaroo, The I: 373 

Owl and the Pussy Cat, The II: 412 

There Was an Old Man With a Beard 1 : 105 

Lefevre, Felicite 

Cock, the Mouse and the Little Red Hen, The I: 212 

Legends: 

Boy Hero of Harlem, The (Holland) II: 184 

Old Johnny Appleseed (American) . II: *323 II: f352 

Sir Beaumains, the Kitchen Knight (Old English) V: 327 

William Tell (Swiss) V : 390 

LETTER FROM a cat, a — H elen Hunt Jackson I: *315 I: f313 

Lernean Hydra, The IV : 423 

Liath Macha _ . . V : 396 

Lincoln, Abraham II: *235 II: f298 

Lindsay, Maud 

How the Home Was Built 1 : 285 

Little Gray Pony, The I: 92 

Mrs. Tabby Gray I: 180 


238 


\ 


the latch key 

Lindsay, Vachell 

Explanation of the Grasshopper, An II : 34 

Moon’s the North Wind’s Cooky, The . II: 411 

Lion , The (Una and the Red Cross Knight) V: 12 

LION AND THE MOUSE, THE — AeSOp I ; 148 

Lions , The IV: 408 

Lily Rosalie Violet May HI: 86 

Lind, Mr HI: 98 

Lind , Mrs Ill: 98 

Lise HI: 348 

•Little Beate I: 425 

Little Bees Five I: 64 

little BIG man, the — R abindranath Tagore I : *89 I : f 88 

Little Bird, The I: *170 I: fl67 

Little Birdie I: 103 

Little Birdies Three. I: 64 

Little Birds, The I: 302 

Little Black Cat, The I: 352 

LITTLE BLUE APRON— Old Story Book I: *418 I: f424 

Little Boy, A (A Sea-Song from the Shore) II: *40 II: f325 

Little Brown Beetle, The II: 128 

Little Brown Brother I: 221 

Little Brown Children, The I: 222 

Little Brown Duck, The I: *340 I: |339 

little brown hands — M ary H. Krout II: *256 

Little Brown Hen, The I: *162 I: fl68 

Little Brown Owls Ill: 215 

Little Brown Seed, The I: 221 

little busy bee, the — I saac Watts II: 137 

Little Crab, The I: 113 

Little Crickets Seven 1 : 64 

Little Crows Six 1 : 64 

Little Diamond and the North Wind — George MacDonald Ill: 422 

LITTLE DROPS OF WATER I*. 131 

Little Em'ly IV : 98 

little engine that could, the — M abel C. Bragg 1 : 193 

Little Fishes Two I: 64 

Little Frog, The I: 178 

Little Froggies Nine 1 : 64 

Little Girl with the Broom, The Ill: 422 

Little Girl, The (The Little Girl and the Hare) I: 241 

Little Goose-Girl, A Ill: 215 

little girl and the hare, the — A German Folk Tale I: 241 

little goody two-shoes — A scribed to Oliver Goldsmith II: 133 

Little Gray, Coaxing Cat, The I: *162 I: fl68 

little gray pony, the — M aud Lindsay 1 : 92 

Little Gray Rabbit, The V: 255 

little gulliver — L ouisa M. Alcott IV: 85 

little gustava — C elia Thaxter I: *162 I: f!68 

little half-chick — A Spanish Folk Tale 1 : 304 

Little John V: 49 

Little Lamb, The (Dear Sensibility) IV: 275 

Little Lizards Eight I: 64 

little maid of far japan — A nnette Wynne II: 68 

LITTL E-MAN-AS-BIG-AS - YOUR-THUMB- WITH-MUSTACHES-SEVEN-MILES 

long, the — A Russian Tale IV: 26 


239 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

Little Man with a Fiddle , The Ill : 395 

Little Mermaid, A (A Sea-Song from the Shore) II: * 40 II: f325 

Little Mouse , The (Ole-Luk-Oie, The Sandman) I: ]132 

little nell and mrs. jarley’s wax works — C harles Dickens . . . Ill: 130 

Little Old Lady with White Hair, The (The Clocks of Rondaine) ... IV: 251 

Little Old Man in a Long Cloak, The IV: 204 

Little Old Man with a White Beard, A (The Enchanted Island) .... IV: 12 

little pictures from far japan— S okan, Ransetsu, Ranko and Yaha I: 370 

little rabbitt who wanted red wings, the — R etold by Carolyn 

Sherwin Bailey I: 151 

Little Rabbits, The II: * 160 II: fl45* 

Little Ratties Four I: 64 

Little Red Hen, The (The Little Red Hen and the Grain of Wheat) . . 1 : 60 

Little Red Hen, The (The Cock, the Mouse and the Little Red Hen) . I: 212 

little red ridinghood — A French Folk Tale II: *53 

Little Robber Maiden, The Ill: 303 

Little Sandpiper IV: 115 

Little Sea-horse, A II: * 40 I: f325 

little SNOW maiden, THE — A Russian Folk Tale II: *293 II: f230 

Little Spiders Ten I: 64 

Little Toadie One I: 64 

Little White Doves, The I: *162 I: f!68 

LITTLE WIND — Kate Greenaway 1 : 59 

Locomotive, The IV: 117 

Logi IV : 436 

Loki (Thor’s Journey to Jotun-Heim) IV: 436 

Loki (The Stealing of Iduna) IV : 444 

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth 

Rain in Summer II : 203 

Hiawatha’s Childhood II: 431 

Hiawatha’s Fasting IV: 381 

Thor IV: 443 

Long-nose, the Old Witch Ill : 399 

Lord High Sheriff of Nottingham V : 49 

Lord of Ely V : 49 

Lord of the Castle, The IV : 204 

LOST SPEAR, THE— A South African Tale Ill: 228 

Lot, King ( See King Lot) 

Lothrop, Margaret Sidney 


Lotus-blossom II: 271 

Louis Philippe, King ( See King Louis Philippe) 

Loki V: 359 

Lovdiness-That-Shines IV: 26 

Lowell, James Russell 

Stanzas on Freedom V: 216 

luck boy of toy valley, the — Katherine Dunlap Cather Ill: 106 

Lucifer a V: 12 

Lucy Desborough V : 228 

lullaby for titania — William Shakespeare Ill: 25 

Lycosa, The (The Spider) IV: 189 

Lynette . V: 327 

Lyre-bird II: 112 

Lytle, Maggie IV: 363 

Lytle, Mr IV: 363 

Lytle, Mrs IV : 363 

Lytle, Tom IV: 363 


240 




THE LATCH KEY 

MacDonald, George 

Little Diamond and the North Wind Ill: 422 

MAcdoNELL, Anne 

Gigi and the Magic Ring Ill: 337 

Madge Magpie I: 171 

MAGGIE TULLIVER GOES TO LIVE WITH THE GYPSIES — George Eliot . . IV I 213 

MAGIC HORSE, the — T he Arabian Nights IV: 40 

Magpie's Nest , The (An English Folk Tale) I: 178 

Maid Marian V: 49 

Maid of Beauty (Rainbow Maiden) V : 359 

Maiden-that-beams , The Ill: 220 

Malayan monkey song, a — T r. by Skeat and Blagden Ill : 205 

Maliarda Ill: 337 

Mammy I: 151 

Man in the Moon , The Ill: 74 

man who loved hai quai — A n Indian Ta!e of Mt. Tacoma Ill: 261 

Manacita II: *245 II: t 87 

Ma Qualoan Ill: 197 

march — W illiam Cullen Bryant Ill: 353 

Mare, de la, Walter 

Barber’s, The II: * 89 II: f328 

Old Shellover I: 150 

Maria Ill: 337 

Marianne Ill: 112 

Marit I: 358 

Marjorie’s almanac — T homas Bailey Aldrich II : 260 

Markham, Edwin 

Humming Bird, The Ill: 289 

Maroosia II: 300 

Marsile , the Saracen King V : 254 

Mary (Babe of Bethlehem) II : 300 

Mary (A Laughing Song) I: 284 

Marygold Ill: 274 

mary had a little lamb — S arah Josepha Hall I: 254 

Matsu I: 371 

marvelous pot, the — J. Christian Bay Ill: 69 

Masefield, John 

Mr. Hampden’s Shipwreck V: 264 

master of all masters — J oseph Jacobs II: 410 

May-bug, The II: 414 

Mayrose Ill : 408 

Meanwell, Margery (Goody Two-Shoes) II: 133 

Meanwell, Tommy II: 132 

Medusa IV: 413 

meg merrilies — J ohn Keats IV: 212 

melilot — H enry Morley Ill : 242 

melting pot, the — I srael Zangwill V: 173 

memoirs of a white elephant, the — J udith Gautier IV: 152 

Men of Galloway, The V: 281 

Men of Israel, The .HI: 257 

merchant, the — R abindranath Tagore I: * 39 I: J324 

Merchant, The (The Marvelous Pot) Ill: 69 

Merchant, The (The Sandy Road) II : 200 

Mercury IV: 412 

Meredith, George 

Richard Feverel and the Hayrick V: 228 

merman, the — A lfred Tennyson IV: 96 

Merry Sacristan, The IV: 251 


241 


MY BOOK HOUSE 


Midas , King ( See King Midas) 

Mice , The 

Michael , the Hospodar 

Midianites , The 

Mikado , The 

Milkmaid , The 

MILKMAID AND HER PAIL, THE — AeSOp . . 

Mill, The 

Miller, The 

Miller, Joaquin 

Music-Loving Bears 

Miller, Olive Beaupre 

Circus Parade, The 

City Smoke 

Happy Day in the City, A 

Road to China, The 

Milton, John 

Song on a May Morning 

Miner, The 

Minerva 

Miss Ant 

Miss Puddle-Duck 

Miss Weather 

Mr. Ape 

Mr. Beetle 

Mr. Bushy Tail 

Mr. Firefly 

Mr. Ground Hog 

Mr. Hangman 

mr. hampden’s shipwreck — J ohn Masefield 

Mr. Jay 

Mr. McGregor 

Mr. Moon (What Else the Moon Saw) . . 

mr. moon — B liss Carman . 

Mr. Porcupine 

Mr. Red 

Mr. Scaramouch 

Mr. Toad 

Mr. Woodcutter 

Mrs. Dove 

Mistress Puss 

Mrs. Rabbit 

Mrs. Red 

Mrs. Spider 

mrs. tabby gray — M aud Lindsay .... 

Mither 

Mjolner (Thor’s Journey to Jotun-Heim) . 

Mjolner, the Mighty (Thor) 

mock turtle’s song, the — L ewis Carroll . 
Moe, Jorgen 

Doll Under the Briar Rosebush, The . 

Mole, The 

Mondamin 

Monks, The 

Monster-Knight, The (Death) 

month of march, the — G eorgene Faulkner 
moo-coo-moo, the — E dmund Vance Cooke 



. . . I: 
. . . Ill: 
. . . IV: 
. . . Ill: 
. . . IV: 
. . . I: 
. . . IV: 
. . . I: 

. . . Ill: 

. . . II: 
. . . I: 
. . . I: 
. . . I: 

. . . Ill: 
. . . I: 

. . . V: 
II: *41 II: 
. . . I: 
. . . II: 

. . . II: 

. . . I: 

. . . I: 

. . . II: 

. . . I: 

. . . Ill: 

. . . V: 

. . . I: 

. . . I: 

. . . I: 

. . . Ill: 

, . . I: 
I: *268 I: 

. . . Ill: 

. . . I: 

. . . I: 

. . . I: 

. . . II: 

. . . I: 
I: *268 I: 

. . . I: 

. . . I: 

. . . I: 

. . . IV: 

. . . IV: 

. . . IV: 

. . . I: 

. . . II: 

. . . IV: 

. . . II: 

. . . V: 

. . . Ill: 
I: *294 I: 


84 

376 

402 

179 

142 

145 

117 

92 

123 

386 

417 

396 

386 

31 
92 

412 

f46 

151 

*57 

82 

228 

151 

82 

151 

438 

264 

161 

186 

101 

32 
151 

|269 

438 

228 

352 

161 

329 

186 

t269 

228 

180 

235 

436 

443 

150 

425 

414 

381 

87 

327 

348 

J234 


242 



the latch key 


Moon-flower 

Moon Lady , The 

Moon-man , The 

moon-maiden, the — A Japanese Fairy Tale 

MOON, so ROUND and yellow — M atthias Barr 

moon’s the north wind’s cooky, the — V achell Lindsay . 

Moos-Moos, the Great Elk 

Moppet 

Mopsy Rabbit 

Morley, Henry 

Meli'ot 

Morpheus 

Moses 

Mother (How the Home Was Built) 

Mother (A Happy Day in the City) 

Mother (The Cap That Mother Made) 

Mother (The Merchant) 

Mother Bear 

Mother- Cricket 

Mother-Crow 

Mother- Frog 

MOTHER GOOSE 

Mother Hen 

Mother-Honey Bee 

Mother-Lizard 

Mother-Muskrat 

Mother of Exiles . . . 

mother spider — F rances Bliss Gillespy 

MOUNTAINS THAT LABORED, THE — Aesop 

Mouse , The (The Little Red Hen and the Grain of Wheat) 

Mouse , The (The Cat and the Mouse) 

Mouse , The (The Lion and the Mouse) 

Mouse , The (The Cock, the Mouse and the Little Red Hen) 

Mousikin 

Mozart , Leopold 

Much , the Miller's Son 

music-loving bears — J oaquin Miller 

Mustapha Ben , the Tailor 

my Nicaragua — S alomon de la Selva 

Naiads , The 

Nakoda, the Captain 

Naomi, Aunt 

Ragged Pedlar, The 

Natasia 

Nausicaa 

Ned 

Nell 

Nekrassov, Nicholas 

Village Fair, The 

nell and her bird — M ary Mapes Dodge 

Nemean Lion , The 

Nep , the Newfoundland 

Nereides 

Nereus, the Old Man of the Ocean 

Nero 

Nesbit, Edith 

Baby Seed Song 

NEW colossus, the — E mma Lazarus 


II 

III 

II 

III 

I 

II 

III 

IV 


... Ill 
. . . V 
.1: *420 I 
. . . I 
. . . I 
. . . II 
II: *39 II 
. . . I 
. . . I 
. . . I 
. . . I 
. . . I 
. . . I 
... I 
. . . I 
. . . I 
. . . I 
. . • I 
. . . II 
. . . I 
. . . I 
. . . I 
. . . I 
. . . Ill 
. . . Ill 
. . . V 
. . . Ill 
. . . II 
. . . Ill 
. . . V 
. . . Ill 

. . . Ill: 
. . . II: 
. . . V: 
. . . I: 
. . . I: 

. . . Ill: 
. . . I: 
. . . IV: 
. . . IV: 
. . . Ill: 
. . . Ill: 
. . . I: 

. . . I: 
. . . V: 


271 

179 

175 

179 

68 

411 

162 

85 


242 

12 

f419 

285 

396 

12 

t324 

248 

64 

64 

64 

2 

304 

64 

64 

64 

172 

228 

*342 

60 

f78 

148 

212 

337 

112 

49 

123 

252 

210 

12 

197 

252 

218 

423 

396 

103 

182 

103 

423 

85 

268 

268 

201 

221 

172 


243 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

Newell, Peter 

Her Dairy Ill: 81 

Wild Flowers Ill: 85 

New England Boy , The (The Sugar Camp) IV: 143 

Nigel Bruce V: 281 

night and day — M ary Mapes Dodge I: *424 I: fl84 

night ride in a prairie schooner, A — Hamlin Garland IV: 183 

Nils Ill: 98 

Nimmo , the Dwarf . . II: 182 

noah’s ark — T he Bible I: 295 

Nod I: *324 I: fl41 

Noel, Thomas 

Old Winter Ill: 153 

Nokomis II: 431 IV: 381 

North Wind, The (Little Diamond and the North Wind) Ill: 422 

North Wind, The (The Moon’s the North Wind’s Cooky) II: 411 

North Wind's Cooky , The . . II: 411 

Noyes, Alfred 

Christmas Song at Sea, A V: 279 

Fairy Forests Ill: 236 

Song from “The Flower of Old Japan,” A . . . Ill: 178 

Song of Drake’s Men, A IV: 11 

Number Four Ill: 64 

Number Jingle 

Ten Little Injuns I : *339 I : f345 

Nuremberg stove, the — L ouise de la Ramee IV: 284 

nurse’s song — W illiam Blake II: 77 

Nursery Rhymes I: 2 — 57 

Nuschagak Ill: 220 

nutcracker and sugardoi.ly stories, the — C arolyn Sherwin Bailey II: 91 

Nutt, Commodore IV: 163 

Oaks, The II: *57 

October’s party — G eorge Cooper II: *57 

Odin, the All-father IV: 444 

Odyssey of Homer 

Home-coming of Ulysses, The V : 423 

oeyvind and marit — B jomsteme Bjomson 1 : 358 

ogre that played jackstraws, the — D avid Starr Jordan Ill: 174 

Old Ballads 

Ye Merry Doinges of Robin Hood V: 49 

Old Begger -Woman, The IV: 204 

Old Black Cricket , The Ill : 32 

Old Charley I: *315 I: |313 

Old English Epic, Beowulf 

How Beowulf Delivered Heorot V: 413 

Old Dan IV: 85 

Old Gray Pussy I:* 166 I: fl63 

Old Father Red-cap V : 107 

OldHilding V: 338 

Old Hucksterw oman, The IV: 195 

old johnny appleseed — A n American Legend II: *323 II: J352 

Old, Llewellyn Ill: 142 

Old Man, The V: 12 

Old Man Hoberg II: 251 

Old Man North IV: 124 

Old Man of the Mountain, The Ill: 376 

Old Man with a Beard, An I: 105 

Old Meg IV: 212 


244 




THE LATCH KEY 


Old Minister , The V 

OV Miss Guinea Hen II 

OV Mistah Buzzard I 

OLD MR. CHANG — Tr. Isaac T. Headland I 

Old Mr. Moon (What the Moon Saw) I 

Old Mrs. Rabbit I: *268 I 

Old Moon, The I: *324 I 

Old Mother Blue-Bird I 

Old Mother- Fish I 

Old Mother Red I : *268 I 

Old Mother Squirrel I: *268 I 

Old Mother-Toad I 

Old Mother West Wind I 

Old Mouse I 

Old Owl II 

Old Queen , The (Princess Nelly) IV 

Old Rhymes 

Dear Sensibility IV 

Farmer’s Boy, The I : *87 I 

Yankee Doodle I 

Old Robber-Woman , The Ill 

Old Sallie Worm I 

Old Shellover I 

Old Toad , The II 

old winter — T homas Noel Ill 

Old Witch, The (Hansel and Grethel) Ill 

Old Witch, The (The Six Swans) Ill 

Old Woman, The (The Snow Queen) Ill 

Old Woman, The (Gigi) Ill 

ole-luk-oie, the sandman — H ans Christian Andersen I 

Ole-Shut Eye I 

Oliver • • • V 

opportunity — E dward Rowland Sill V 

Orde, Bobby IV 

Orde, Mr IV 

Orgoglio V 

Oriole, The II 


Osburga 

over in the meadow — Olive A. Wadsworth . . 

owl, the — Alfred Tennyson II 

Owl, The (The Magpie's Nest) I 

Owl, The (The Owl) II 

owl and the pussy-cat, the — Edward Lear ... 
owl’s answer to tommy, the — Julia Horatia Ewing 

Ox, The (The Dog in the Manger) 

Ox, The (The Frog and the Ox) 

Paine, Albert Bigelow 


Pallas Athene. 
Pantaloon 


V 

80 

I 

64 

II 

24 

I 

171 

II 

24 

II 

412 

II 

25 

I 

157 

I 

178 

III 

: 126 

V 

: 423 

III 

: 354 

I 

: 233 


Parrot , The 

Patty , the Milkmaid 

Paul (Boots and His Brothers) II 

Peabody, Josephine Preston 

Late I 


57 
138 
375 
394 
69 
f269 
1 141 
64 
64 
f269 
f268 
64 
375 
84 
25 
363 

275 

f90 

98 

303 

150 

150 

414 

153 

45 

363 

307 

333 

fl32 

132 

300 

337 

124 

124 

12 

22 

74 



f294 


245 


MY BOOK HOUSE 



Peacock , A I 

Peacocks, The I 

Pear Blossom (Ewa) Ill 

Peasant, The V 

peddler’s caravan, the — W illiam Brighty Rands II 

Peddler, The (The Nutcracker and Sugardolly Stories) II 

Peddler's Wife, The II 

pedlar’s song, the — W illiam Shakespeare Ill 

Pedro Ill 

Peechy Prauw Van Hook V 

peeny pen pone — L aura Campbell II 

Peggotty . IV 

Peggotty, Ham IV 

Peggotty, Mr IV 

Penelope II 

Pennyroyal .Ill 

Perez, Juan II 

PERFECT KNIGHT, A— Geoffrey Chaucer V 

Perrault, Charles 

Cinderella II 

Toads and Diamonds II: *353 II 

Perseus IV 

pert fire engine, the — G elett Burgess Ill 

Persia, The Prince of IV 

Persia, The Sultan of IV 

Peter Rabbit (Tale of Peter Rabbit) I 

PETER RABBIT DECIDES TO CHANGE HIS NAME — Thomton W. BurgeSS . I 

Peter (Christening the Baby in Russia) II 

Peter (Heidi in the Alpine Pasture) II 

Peter (Little Snow Maiden) II: *293 II 

Peter (Boots and His Brothers) II 

Peter (Hansel and Grethel) Ill 

phaeton — A Greek Myth Ill 

Pharaoh I: *420 I 

Pharaoh V 

Pharaoh's Daughter I: *420 I 

Philistines, The Ill 

Philomel Ill 

Phineus IV 

Phoebus Apollo Ill 

pibroch of donuil dhu — S ir Walter Scott V 

piccola II 

Pierrot II 

Pig, The (The Little Red Hen and the Grain of Wheat) I 

Pig, The (The Sheep and the Pig That Made a Home) 1 

Pigeons, The II: *151 II 

Piggy-Wig, A II 

pigling and her proud sister — W illiam Eliot Griffis Ill 

Pigtail, The Ill 

Pirn II 

plains’ call, the — A rthur Chapman IV 

planting of the apple tree, the — W illiam Cullen Bryant .II: *328 II 

Pluto IV 

Poe, Edgar Allan 

Bells, The Ill 

Policeman , The Ill 

Polo , Marco II 


156 

160 

191 

152 

448 

91 

91 

256 
154 
107 
182 

98 

98 

98 

204 

174 

204 

326 

165 

f323 

412 

64 

40 

40 

186 

375 

218 

277 

f230 

237 

45 

268 

f419 

294 

t419 

257 
25 

412 
268 
280 
303 
354 
60 
279 
1 155 
412 
191 
196 
182 
182 
f357 
423 

302 

438 

204 




246 




THE LATCH KEY 


Pondalorum 

Polydectes 

PONY ENGINE AND THE PACIFIC EXPRESS, THE — 

William Dean Howells II : *343 

Poor Brother , The 

Poor Husbandman, The 

Poor Man, The 

Poor Man's Wife , The 

Poor Prince, The 

Porter, Captain David 

Portugal , King of 

Potipher 

Potter, Beatrix 

Tale of Peter Rabbit, The 

POULSSON, EMILIE 

Judging By Appearances 

Powers, Jimmy 

precocious PIGGY Thomas Hood I: *132 

Prentiss, Elizabeth 

German Cradle Song 

Prince , The (East O' the Sun and West O’ the Moon) 

Prince, The (The Golden Bird) 

Prince, The (Cinderella) 

Prince, The (Thumbelisa) 

Prince A rthur . 

Prince Bahman 

prince cherry — M me. La Princesse de Beaumont 

Prince Firouz Schah 

PRINCE harweda and the magic prison — E lizabeth Harrison .... 

Prince of A ragon 

Prince of Navarre 

Prince Perviz 

Princess, The (How the Waterfall Came to the Thirsting Mountain) . . 

Princess, The (The Swineherd) 

princess on the glass hill, the — S ir George Webb Dasent .... 

Princess Lala 

Princess Maybloom 

PRINCESS NELLY AND THE SENECA CHIEF 

Princess Parizade 

Principal, The 

Pringle, Thomas 

Afar in the Desert 

Proctor, Mr 

Professor Wind 

Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea 

psalm of david, a — The Bible 

psalm OF PRAISE, A — The Bible I: *419 

Pullet , Mr 

Pullet, Mrs 

Punch 

purple cow, the — G elett Burgess 

Pussy I: *315 

Pussy-Cat, The 

Pyle, Howard 

Enchanted Island, The 

Pyle, Katharine 

Story of a Caterpillar, The II: *41 


II: 

IV: 

II 

III 

III 

III 

III 

IV 
IV 
II 
V 


I: 


II: 

IV: 

I: 

I: 

III: 

III: 

II: 

II: 

V: 

IV: 

III: 

IV: 

III: 

V: 

V: 

IV: 

III: 

IV: 

III: 

III: 

III: 

IV: 

IV: 

III: 

III: 

IV: 

II: 

IV: 

II: 

I: 

IV: 

IV: 

III: 

I: 

I: 

II: 

IV: 

II: 


410 

412 

f342 

159 

399 

69 

69 

270 

354 

204 

294 

186 

175 

124 

|76 

18 

399 

292 

165 

414 

12 

57 

326 

40 

34 

316 

316 

57 

376 

270 

52 

228 

12 

363 

57 

98 

226 

124 

*57 

423 

t256 

f423 

213 

213 

438 

240 

f313 

412 

12 

f46 


247 


MY BOOK HOUSE 


Queen , The (The Six Swans) 

Queen Cassiopeia ( See Cassiopeia, Queen.) 

Queen Dowager , The (Adelaide) 

Queen of the Fairies 

Queen of the Moon- Fairies 

Queen Kaikeyi ( See Kaikeyi, Queen.) 

Queen Kausalya ( See Kausalya, Queen.) 

Queen Rosebush 

Queen Victoria ( See Victoria, Queen.) 

Queen Wealtheow ( See Wealtheow, Queen.) 

Queered 

quick-running squash, the — A lice Aspinwall 

Quincy Davenport ‘ . 

Quidnunc 

Quixano , David 

Quixano, Mendel 

Rabbits, The Little II: *161 

Raccoon, The 

RAGGED PEDLAR, THE — Aunt Naomi 

Ragged Urchin, The 

Rags I: *162 

rain in summer — H enry Wadsworth Longfellow 

Rakush 

Rama 

Rama yana, the sacred poem of india 

Exile of Rama, The 

Ramee, Louise de la 

Nuremberg, Stove, The 

Ramm, Repelye (Rem) 

Rands, William Brighty 

Peddler’s Caravan, The 

Wonderful World, The 

Ranko, Ransetsu, Sokan and yaha 

(See Little Pictures from Far Japan) 

Ransetsu, Ranko, Sokan and yaha 

(See Little Pictures from Far Japan) 

Ransome, Arthur 

Christening the Baby in Russia 

Raven, The 

recollections of the Arabian nights — A lfred Tennyson 

Red Branch Knights of Ulster, The 

Red-caps, The 

Red Cross Knight, The 

Red Ridinghood, Little 

Red Knight, The 

Reddy Fox 

Remus, Uncle II: *161 

RENOWNED AND WORLD-FAMOUS ADVENTURES OF PUNCH AND JUDY, THE 

Reuben 

RHODOPIS AND HER LITTLE GILDED SANDALS 

rice seller, the — C hinese Nursery Rhymes, Tr. by Isaac Headland 

Rich Brother, The 

Rich Man, The 

richard feverel and the hayrick — G eorge Meredith 

Richards, Laura E. 

Child’s Play II: *145 

Coming of the King, The 

Cooky, The 

Rosy Posy 


III 

: 363 

IV 

: 163 

II 

: 262 

III 

: 228 

II 

: 91 

III 

32 

1 

201 

V 

173 

III 

32 

V 

173 

V 

173 

II 

fl45 

I 

299 

III 

252 

IV 

195 

I 

1168 

II 

203 

V 

436 

V 

383 

V 

: 383 

IV 

284 

V 

: 107 

II: 

448 

II: 

11 

I: 

370 

I: 

370 

II 

218 

III 

303 

IV 

56 

V 

396 

V 

12 

II 

*53 

V 

327 

I 

375 

II 

tl45 

III 

438 

V 

294 

III 

262 

I 

395 

III 

159 

III 

69 

V 

228 

II 

fl49 

II 

74 

I 

*232 

I 

192 


248 


THE 


LATCH K E 


RIGHT TIME to laugh, the— A n Australian Tale .... 
Riley, James Whitcomb 

Brook Song, The 

Daring Prince, The 

It 

Sea-Song from the Shore, A 

Ring , King (See King Ring) 

Ripton Thompson 

River Boss, The 

ROAD TO CHINA, the — O live Beaupre Miller 

Robert bruce, Scotland's hero— -S cottish History . . . 

ROBERT of Lincoln — W illiam Cullen Bryant 

Robin (Why the Robin’s Breast is Red) 

Robin Goodfellow 

Robin Hood 

Robin Redbreast 

Robin, Sir 

rockaby-lullaby — J. G. Holland 

Roger (The Ogre That Played Jackstraws) 

Rogers, Captain Woodes, Steele, Sir Richard, et al. 

Adventures of Alexander Selkirk, The 

Roland 

Roland, Sir (See Sir Roland) 

Roorback (Rollebuck) 

Rosebush, Queen (See Queen Rosebush) 

Roskva 

Ross , Betsy 

Rossetti, Christina 

Bow That Bridges Heaven, The 

Who Has Seen the Wind? 

rosy posy — L aura E. Richards 

Rough Ruddy 

Roundheads, The 

Rozinante 

Rudabeh 

Ruskin, John and Sharpe, Mary E. 

Dame Wiggins of Lee 

Rustem, the Persian Hero, Retold from the Shah-Nameh 

Kings) by Firdusi 

Ruth 

Ruy Diaz (The Cid) 

Sage, The 

Sailor, The 

St. George 

Sokan, Ransetsu, Ranko and Yaha 

(See Little Pictures from Far Japan) . . 

Sally 

Sammy Jay 

Sampo 

Sancho Panza 

Sandman, The 

sandpiper, the — C elia Thaxter 

Santa Claus 

sandy road, the — E llen C. Babbitt .... 

Sandburg, Carl 

The Fog 

Sansfoy, the Saracen 



. . . . II 

II: *52 II 
. . . . I 
. . . . I 
II: *40 II 


. . . . V 

. ... IV 
. . . . I 

. . . . V 

. ... Ill 
. . . . II 

. ... Ill 
. . . . V 

II: *47 II 
. . . . I 

. . . . I 

. ... Ill 

. ... IV 
. . . . V 


.... V: 

.' ' .* .' IV: 
II: *230 II: 

.... I: 
.... I: 
.... I: 
.... Ill: 
.... IV: 
.... V: 
.... V: 

.... II: 
(Book of 
. . . . V: 

.... I: 
.... V: 
.... Ill: 
.II: *40 II: 
.... V: 

. . . . I: 
.... I: 
.... I: 
.... V: 
.... V: 
.... I: 
.... IV: 
.... II: 
.... II: 

.... Ill: 
.... V: 


2 49 


Y 


112 

tS7 

100 

179 

|325 

228 

124 

386 

281 

122 

*35 

12 

49 

t52 

114 
8 

174 

328 

300 

107 

436 

f293 

298 

120 

192 

12 

315 
90 

436 

19 

436 

396 

316 
196 

|325 

12 

370 

115 
375 
358 

90 

fl32 

115 

58 

200 

251 

12 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

Sans joy V: 12 

Sansloy . V: 12 

Sarah Jane Ill : 86 

Satyrs V: 12 

Saul Ill: 257 

Schwanli II: 277 

Scott, Sir Walter 

Hie Away, Hie Away Ill : 44 

Pibroch of Donuil Dhu V : 280 

sea gull, the — M ary Howitt IV : 84 

Sea-horse , A Little ( See Little Sea-horse) 

sea shell, the — A my Lowell Ill: 164 

sea-song from the shore, a — J ames Whitcomb Riley ... II: *40 I: f325 

secret door, the — S usan Coolidge IV: 315 

selfish giant, the — O scar Wilde II: 246 

Selva, Salomon de la 

My Nicaragua Ill: 210 

Selim the Baker IV: 12 

Selim the Fisherman IV: 12 

Selkirk, Alexander IV: 328 

Senecas , The IV: 363 

Serena Ill: 86 

Sergie II: 218 

Servant, The (The Renowned and World Famous Adventures of Punch 

and Judy) Ill: 438 

Servant Girl, The (Master of All Masters) II: 410 

Setanta (Cuchulain) V: 396 

Seton, Ernest Thompson 

Coaly-Bay, the Outlaw Horse V: 218 

Setoun, Gabriel (Thomas N. Hepburn) 

Jack Frost I: 210 

Shakespeare, William 

Ariel's Song II: 369 

Jog On I: 16 

Lullaby for Titania Ill: 25 

The Pedlar’s Song, The Ill: 256 

Under the Greenwood Tree V: 74 

When Daffodils Begin to Peer 1 : 38 

shaking OF the pear-tree, THE — Dinah Maria Muloch Craik . . . Ill: 142 

Sharp-ear Ill: 184 

Sharpe, Mary E. and Ruskin, John 

Dame Wiggins of Lee II : 19 

sheep AND THE PIG that made a HOME, THE — A Norse Folk Tale . . I: 279 

Shelley, Percy Bysshe 

Cloud, The Ill: 273 

Shepard, Odell 

Goldfinch, The II: 23 

Shepherd Boy, The I: 372 

shingebiss — A Chippewa Indian Tale I: *340 I: f339 

shoemaker and the elves, the — A German Folk Tale I: 346 

Siam, The King of IV: 152 

Sill, Edward Rowland 

Tropical Morning at Sea, A Ill: 209 

Opportunity V: 337 

Silly Little Brook, The II: 47 

Simeon V; 294 

Simpson, Sally II: 133 


250 


THE LATCH KEY 

SING, LITTLE BIRD I: *170 It fl67 

Sir Austin Fever el V: 228 

Sir Bcaumains (Gareth) V: 327 

Sir Henry de Bohun V 

Sir John , the Red Comyn V 

Sir Kay V 

Sir Lancelot V 

sir robin — L ucy Larcom I 

Sir Roland IV 

Sir Satyrane V 

Sire de Baudricourt V 

Sister Polly I 

Sita V 

six SWANS, THE— A German Fairy Tale . . Ill 
Skeat and Blagden — Translators 

Malayan Monkey Song, A Ill 

Skipper , The Ill 

Skrymir the Giant IV 

SLEEPING BEAUTY, THE Ill 

sleepy song, the — J osephine Daskam Bacon I 

Smith , Mr II 

Smith, Mrs 



snow — Mary Mapes Dodge I: *165 


snow queen, the — Hans Christian Ar 
SNOW WHITE AND ROSE RED — Grimm 

Sokan, Ransetsu, Ranko and Yaha 


SONG FROM “THE FLOWER OF OLD JAPAN," A — Alfa 
song of drake’s men, a — Alfred Noyes . . . . 

SONG OF THE LEPRECHAUN, OT FAIRY SHOEMAKER- 


-William Allingham 


SONG SPARROW 

Sorcerer, The 


THE- 


Southey, Robert 


Sparrow, The (The Magpie’s Nest) 
Spenser, Edmund 


Spiny 

spring — Celia Thaxter 
Spyri, Johanna 


Squill 


SQUIRRELS THAT LIVE IN A HOUSE, THE 

Stag of Diana, The . 

stanzas on freedom — James Russell Lowell 


Harriet Beecher Stowe . I : *268 


II 

133 

IV 

150 

I 

f 162 

II 

434 

II 

434 

II 

277 

V 

253 

III 

303 

.11 

t35 

I 

370 

IV 

353 

III 

178 

IV 

11 

II 

f370 

III 

31 

II 

62 

V 

12 

II 

314 

II 

411 

III 

399 

III: 

383 

I: 

171 

V 

12 

V 

12 

III 

262 

II 

112 

I 

302 

II 

277 

II 

410 

III 

242 

IV 

36 

I 

t269 

IV 

423 

V 

216 


251 



MY BOOK HOUSE 

star, the — J ane Taylor I: 374 

Star , The (Legend of the Water Lily) II: *118 II: fll7 

Statue of Liberty, The (The New Colossus) V: 172 

Starling , The I: 171 

stealing of iduna, the — A Norse Myth . IV: 444 

steamboat and the locomotive, the — Gelett Burgess IV: 117 

Steamboat^ The . . . . IV: 117 

Stedman, Edmund Clarence 

Going A-Nutting IV: 149 

Stepanuich IV: 195 

Stevenson, Robert Louis 

Farewell to the Farm II: 217 

Swing, The I: *278 I: f267 

Where Go the Boats? I: *234 I: f232 

World, The I: 1 

Stewart , Duncan IV: 183 

Stewart , Lincoln IV: 183 

Stiff step Ill: 12 

Stockton, Frank R. 

Clocks of Rondaine, The IV: 251 

Stone Statue, The IV: 12 

Storekeeper , The I: 92 

Stork, The I: 140 

story about the little rabbits, a — J oel Chandler Harris . .II: *161 II: fl45 

story of a beaver, the — W illiam Davenport Hulbert Ill: 117 

story of a caterpillar, the — K atharine Pyle II: *41 II: f46 

STORY OF ALFRED, THE SAXON, THE — English History V: 80 

story of a spider, the (Narbonne Lycosa) — J. Henri Fabre .... IV: 189 

STORY of fairyfoot, THE — Frances Browne II: 12 

story of joan of arc, the — F rench History V : 306 

story of liVhannibal, the — T ranscribed by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey II: 138 

story of Roland, the — F rom the French Chanson de Roland ... V : 300 

story of the talking bird, the — T he Arabian Nights IV: 57 

story of tom thumb, the — A n English Folk Tale II: 262 

Stowe, Harriet Beecher 

Squirrels That Live in a House, The 1:268 I: f269 

Straddling, Captain IV: 328 

strange lands — L awrence Alma-Tadema I: 161 

Strehla, August IV: 284 

Strehla, Dorothea IV: 284 

Strehla, Karl IV: 284 

strong boy, the — A Canadian Fairy Tale Ill: 165 

Sualtam, King (See King Sualtam) 

sugar camp, the — C harles Dudley Warner IV: 143 

Sugar dolly II: 91 

sugar plum tree, the — E ugene Field 1 : 144 

Suliman (The Ragged Pedlar) Ill: 252 

Suliman (Prince Cherry) Ill: 326 

Sumarr Ill: 197 

Sun, The (The Wind and the Sun) I: 119 

Sun, The (The Brooklet’s Story) II: * 47 II: f 52 

Sun, The (The Fisherman Who Caught the Sun) Ill: 206 

Sunshine, The II: *57 

Superintendent of the Museum, The IV: 251 

Susan 1 : 284 

Su-wen Ill: 191 

Swallow, The II: 414 


252 


THE LATCH KEY 


sweet and low — A lfred Tennyson I 

Sweet Mary **[****** Ill 

Swift-of-foot !!!!!!!!!!!! hi 

Swinburne, Algernon Charles 

White Butterflies I 

swineherd, the— H ans Christian Andersen * * IV 

swing, the — R obert Louis Stevenson I: *268 I 

Swiss Legend, A 

William Tell y 

SWITCH YARD, the— J ohn Curtis Underwood .* .* .* .* .* .* IV 

Sylvanus V 

Tabby Gray , Mrs. ( See Mrs. Tabby Gray) 

Tagore, Rabindranath 

Champa Flower, The I : 

Clouds and Waves I : 

Little Big Man, The I : * 89 I : 

Merchant, The II: *39 II: 

Paper Boats I : 

TALE OF a BLACK cat, the — C lifton Johnson I : 

tale of peter rabbit — B eatrix Potter I: 

Talking Bird , The IV: 

Tar-Baby HI: 

Taylor, Bayard 

Arab to His Horse, The II : 

Taylor, Jane 

The Star I: 

tea party, the — K ate Greenaway I: 

Teacher , The (Mary Had a Little Lamb) I: 

Teacher , The (The Boy Who Wanted the Impossible) I: 

Tear-Maiden , The Ill: 

Ted I: 

teeny-tiny — A n English Folk Tale I : 

Teeny-tiny scare-crow , The I: 

Teeny-tiny woman , The I: 

Telemachus V: 

ten little injuns — N umber Jingle I: *339 I: 

Tennyson, Alfred 

Bugle Song, The V: 

Merman, The IV: 

Owl, The II: 

Recollections of the Arabian Nights IV: 

Sweet and Low I: 

Thaxter, Celia 

Little Gustava I: *162 I: 

Sandpiper, The IV : 

Spring I : 

there was an old man with a beard — E dward Lear I: 

there were two birds sat on a stone — N ursery Rhyme .... I: 

Theresa Ill : 

Thialfi, the greedy one IV: 

Thiassi IV: 

Thistlebird II: 

Thistledrift Ill: 

Thomsen, Gudrun Thorne, Translator 

Bikku Matti II: 

Doll Under the Briar Rose-bush I: 

thor — H enry Wadsworth Longfellow IV: 

Thornbury, Walter 

Cavalier’s Escape, The IV: 


17 

81 

184 

225 

270 

f267 

290 

116 

12 


*76 
107 
t 88 
f324 
233 
115 
186 
57 
237 

313 

374 

59 

254 

388 

376 

109 

336 

336 

336 

423 

f345 

11 

96 

24 

56 

17 

fl68 

115 

302 

105 

177 

211 

436 

444 

277 

32 

394 

425 

443 

326 


253 




MY BOOK HOUSE 


thor’s journey to jotun-heim — A Norse Myth IV: 

Thorsten the Viking V: 

Three Bears , The (Goldilocks and the Three Bears) I: 

Three Fairies , The Ill: 

Three Goats, The I: 

Three Gray Sisters, The IV: 

Three-legged pot, The Ill: 

three little pigs, the — A n English Folk Tale I: 

three sillies, the — J oseph Jacobs IV: 

Three Slaves, The Ill: 

three wishes, the — A Spanish Fairy Tale Ill: 

Threshers, The I: 

through the mouse hole — A Czech Fairy Tale Ill: 

Thrush, The I: 

thumbelisa — H ans Christian Andersen II: 

Thunderer, The IV: 

Tiger II: 

Timid Creature, The Ill: 

Tinker, The V: 

Titania Ill: 

Tit-bit I: *268 I: 

Tiziano . IV: 

to A butterfly — W illiam Wordsworth II: * 46 II: 

Toad, The (Through the Mouse Hole) Ill: 

toads and diamonds — A dapted from Perrault II: *353 II: 

Toby .Ill: 

Tokabi, the black imp Ill: 

Toll-keeper, The II: 

Tolstoi, lyof n. 

Two Pilgrims, The V : 

Where Love Is, There God Is Also IV : 

Tom Bakewell V: 

Tom the Tinker II: 

Tom Thumb II: 

Tom Thumb, General .. IV: 

Tommy (The Tale of a Black Cat) I: 

Tommy (The Owl’s Answer to Tommy) II: 

tongue-cut sparrow, the — T eresa Peirce Williston II: 

Tootah, the thunderer Ill: 

Tortoise, The I: 

tragic story, A — Albert von Chamisso Ill: 

train, the — C. H. Crandall .................. IV: 

Train-of-cars, The I: 

Traveller at the Inn, The IV: 

Tray II: 

trees — J oyce Kilmer V: 

Tree-toad, The I: 

Tresham, Ralph ( Rafe ) IV: 

tropical morning at sea, a — E dward Rowland Sill ....... Ill: 

Trowbridge, John Townsend 

Evening at the Farm IV: 

try again — W illiam E. Hickson I : 

Trumpet, The I: * 91 I: 

Tsar, The Ill: 

Tsar Wise-Head . . . IV: 

Tsarevna, The Ill: 

Tsarevnas, The IV: 


436 

338 

248 

242 

f80 

412 

69 

*134 

80 

211 

154 

121 

384 

171 

414 

443 

69 

85 

228 

25 

t269 

276 

t51 

384 

f323 

438 

191 

434 

152 

194 

228 

262 

262 

163 

115 

25 
63 

216 

299 

196 

123 

193 

80 

19 

263 

109 

315 

209 

142 
200 
t 87 
184 

26 
184 

26 


254 


THE LATCH KEY 


Tsing-Ching I: 388 

TUDUR AP einion — A Welsh Fairy Tale Ill : 395 

Tulliver, Maggie IV: 213 

Tulliver, Mr IV: 213 

Tulliver , Mrs IV: 213 

Tulliver , Tom IV: 213 

Turk II: 277 

Turkey , The II: 412 

Turtle Dove , The I: 171 

turtle who could not stop talking, the — A n East Indian Fable I: 222 

twelve dancing princesses, the — A dapted from Wilhelm and 

Jacob Grimm II: 176 

twelve months, the — A Bohemian Fairy Tale Ill: 145 

Twelve Princesses, The II: 176 

twilight, the — M adison Cawein Ill: 215 

twin lambs, the — C lara Dillingham Pierson I: 255 

TWINKLING BUGS , II: 86 

Two Birds I: 177 

two bad bargains, the — A Servian Tale Ill : 369 

two crabs, the — A esop I: 118 

two little birds and a great man II: f292 

two pilgrims, the — L yof N. Tolstoi V: 153 

Two swindlers , The V: 75 

Ukko V: 359 

Ulysses V: 423 

una and the red cross knight — R etold from Book I of 


Spenser’s Faery Queen . 

UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE- 

Underwood, John Curtis 


-William Shakespeare 


Van Dyke, Henry 


Vera Revendal 


village fair, the — Nicholas Nekrassov . 

Villagers raking the moon , The 

Violet .•••*.• 

Vladimir (Christening the Baby in Russia) 


IV: 

1161 

IV: 

436 \ 

II 

62 I , 

II 

218 Vi 

III 

182 1 

IV 

276 11 

IV 

283 

V 

173 jB’ 

IV 

163 t[ 

III 

182 I 

IV 

80 1 

III 

191 

II 

218 / 

III 

369 [ 


Von Chamisso, Albert 

Tragic Story, A 

Wadsworth, Olive A. 

Over In the Meadow 

Wah-wah-tay-see 

Wainamoinen 

“wake-up” story, the — Eudora Bumstead 

War God, The 

Warner, Charles Dudley 

Sugar Camp, The 

Warren, Lavinia 

Washington, General 

Water-lily , The . . . 



.II: 

II: 


*230 

*118 


I 

II 

V 

I 

IV 

IV 

IV 

II 

II 


64 

431 

359 

71 

443 

143 

163 

f293 

tU7 


255 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

Watt, Jamie II: *147 II: fl51 

Wealtheow, Queen V: 413 

we thank thee — R alph Waldo Emerson II: 259 

Wee little' worm, A I: 179 

wee robin's Christmas song — A Scotch Folk Tale I: *166 I: f!63 

wee, wee mannie^and the big, big coo, the — A Scotch Folk Tale 1 : 235 

Weird Ill: 32 

Wellington, The Duke of IV: 163 

Weeny-Wen- Fairies, The II: 182 

West Wind , The Ill: 399 

Wether Sheep, The I: 255 

Weather-cock, The I: 304 

what else the moon saw — H ans Christian Andersen I: 101 

what the moon saw — H ans Christian Andersen 1 : 69 

what they say — M ary Mapes Dodge I: * 91 I: t 87 

when daffodils begin to peer — W illiam Shakespeare 1 : 38 

where go the boats? — R obert Louis Stevenson I: *234 I: f232 

where love is, there god is also — L yof N. Tols'toi IV: 194 

WHERE SARAH jane’s doll went — M ary E. Wilkins Freeman ... Ill : 86 

Whip, The I: * 91 I: f 87 

whisky frisky I: *267 I: f268 

white aster — R omantic Chinese Poem V: 373 

White Bear, The (East o’ the Sun and West o’ the Moon) Ill: 399 

white butterflies — A lgernon Charles Swinburne I: 225 

White Elephant, The IV: 152 

white horses — H amish Hendry Ill: 158 

White-faced simminy II: 410 

White-imp Ill: 32 

White kitten, The I: 180 

White Rabbit I: 151 

White sheep I: 106 

White, Stewart Edward 

Booms, The IV: 124 

Whiting, The IV: 150 

Whittier, John Greenleaf 

Snow Bound (Extract) V: 253 

Whittington, Dick II: 329 

WHO CAN CRACK nuts? — M ary Mapes Dodge II : 90 

who has seen the wind? — C hristina G. Rossetti I: 120 

who likes the rain? — C lara Doty Bates I: 109 

WHY THE robin's breast is red — A n Eskimo Myth II: *35 

why the sea is salt — G udrun Thome-Thomsen Ill: 159 

Water, The I: 304 

Widow Slocum, The II: *145 II: fl49 

Wife Gertrude, My IV: 314 

wild flowers — P eter Newell Ill: 85 

Wilde, Oscar 

Selfish Giant, The II: 246 

Will Scarlet V: 49 

William O' Leslie V: 49 

william tell — A Swiss Legend V : 290 

Wilson, Billy II: 133 

Wilson, Farmer . II: 133 

Wilson, Woodrow 

Address to New-made Citizens, An V: 217 

Wiltse, Sarah E. 

Henny Penny I: *79 


256 


THE LATCH KEY 


Williston, Teresa Peirce 

Tongue-Cut Sparrow, The II : 

Wind, The (Who Has Seen The Wind?) I: 

Wind, The (Little Half-Chick) I: 

WIND AND THE SUN, THE — Aesop I: 

Winifred IV : 

WINTER neighbors — J ohn Burroughs V: 

Wise Man of the Village, The I : 

wise men of gotham, the — O ld English Tale Ill : 

Wise young bumpkin, A Ill: 

Wolf, The (Little Red Ridinghood) II: 

Wolf, The (Johnny and the Three Goats) I: 

wolfert Webber, or golden dreams — W ashington Irving .... V: 

Wolfert Webber V: 

Wolfgang Ill: 

wonderful world, the — W illiam Brighty Rand II: 

Woodchuck, The I: 

Woodman, The (The Honest Woodman) II: 

Woodman, The (The Moon-Maiden) Ill : 

Wordsworth, William 

Kitten and Falling Leaves, The I : 

To a Butterfly II: * 46 II: 

world, the — R obert Louis Stevenson I : 

Wry face Ill: 

wynken, blynken and nod — E ugene Field I : *324 I : 

Wynken I: *324 I: 

Wynne, Annette 

In Columbus' Time II: 

Indian Children II: *117 II: 

Little Maid of Far Japan II: 

Yaha, Sokan, Ransetsu and Ranko 

{See Little Pictures From Far Japan) I: 

Yankee Doodle I: 

Yarmil Ill: 

Yehl Ill: 

Yellow Knight, The V: 

ye merry doings of robin hood — F rom Old Ballads V: 

Yonge, Charlotte M. 

Gossamer Spider, The IV : 

Youkahainen V : 

YOUNG MIDSHIPMAN DAVID FARRAGUT IV: 

Yucef, King of Morocco V : 

Zalf V: 

Zandilli, the herdsman Ill: 

Zangwill, Israel 

Melting Pot, The . V: 

Zelia Ill : 

Zerubbabel IV : 

Zuleika II : 

Zwilgmeyer Dikken 

Credit to the School, A Ill: 


63 

120 

304 

119 

315 
255 
372 

82 

290 

*53 

f80 

107 

107 

112 

11 

299 

78 

179 

185 
t 51 
1 
32 
fl41 
f 141 

216 

|121 

68 

370 

98 

385 

220 

327 

49 

193 

359 

354 

316 
436 
228 

173 

326 

315 

308 

98 



257 


MY BOOK HOUSE 



GEOGRAPHICAL INDEX 

For the use of those Mothers, Fathers or Teachers whose 
children ask for a story about Spain, Italy, Japan, etc. 

Africa 

Afar in the Desert 

Dick Whittington and His Cat 

Labors of Hercules, The 

Lost Spear, The {Folk Tale) 

Alaska 

Adventures of Yehl and the Beaming Maiden {Folk Tale) 

Ikwa and Annowee 

Alexandria 

Two Pilgrims, The 

Alleghany River 

Princess Nelly and the Seneca Chief 

Alps, The 

Barry, a Dog of the Alps II ; 

Heidi in the Alpine Pasture 

Story of Alfred, the Saxon, The 

William Tell, The Legend of 

Altdorf 

William Tell, The Legend of 

America 

Old Johnny Appleseed 

Melting Pot, The 

Story of Christopher Columbus, The . 

Tale of a Black Cat, The .... 

Arabia 

Arab to His Horse, The .... 

Hassan, the Arab, and His Horse 

Magic Horse, The 

Recollections of the Arabian Nights . 

Story of the Talking Bird, The . 

Argentine 

Mr. Hampden's Shipwreck .... 

Arkansas 

Dance of the Forest People, The . 

Atlantic Ocean 

Melting Pot, The 

Story of Christopher Columbus, The . 

Australia 

Right Time to Laugh, The .... 


9 

Ill: 

226 

m 

II: 

329 



423 


III: 

228 


III: 

220 



388 



152 

. 

IV: 

363 

: 87 

* II: 

t 88 


II: 

277 


V: 

80 


V: 

290 

. 

V: 

290 



352 


V: 

173 


II: 

204 



115 


II: 

113 


II: 

308 


IV: 

40 


IV: 

56 


IV: 

57 


V: 

264 


III: 

126 


V: 

173 


II: 

204 


II: 

113 


258 



THE LATCH KEY 


Austria 

William Tell, The Legend of V: 290 

Luck Boy of Toy Valley, The Ill: 106 

Nuremberg Stove, The IV: 284 

Babylon 

Daniel in the Lions' Den I V : 408 

Bagdat 

Recollections of the Arabian Nights IV: 56 

Barbary 

, Dick Whittington and His Cat II : 329 

Bavaria 

Nuremberg Stove, The IV: 284 

Belgium 

Adventures of General Tom Thumb, The IV: 163 

How the Finch Got Her Colors ( Flemish Folk Tale) . . . .II: 22 

Bengal 

Magic Horse, The IV: 40 

Bethany 

Two Pilgrims, The V: 152 

RuTUT TTTJT? 

Babe of Bethlehem, The II: 300 

David and Goliath Ill: 257 

Black Forest, The 

Hansel and Grethel Ill: 45 

Blois 

Joan of Arc V: 306 

Bohemia 

Twelve Months, The {Folk Tale) Ill: 145 

Boston 

Pony Engine and the Pacific Express, The .... 11:343* 11: f342 

Brazil 

How Night Came ( Folk Tale) Ill: 211 

How the Brazilian Beetles Got Their Gorgeous Coats ( Folk Tale) . II: 128 
p russells 

Adventures of General Tom Thumb, The IV: 163 

Burgos 

Cid and His Daughters, The V:316 

Canada, Dominion of 

George Rogers Clark and the Conquest of the Northwest . . .IV: 390 

Strong Boy, The ( Folk Tale) Ill: 165 

Mr. Moon ( Canadian Poet , Bliss Carman) Ill: 32 

Moo Cow Moo {Canadian Poet, Edmund Vance Cooke) . . I: 294* I: f234 

Brownies in the Toy Shop, The {Canadian writer, Palmer Cox) . .II: 58 

Cape Horn 

Young Midshipman David Farragut IV: 354 


Carpathian Mountains 

How the Waterfall Came to the Thirsting Mountain 
Cashmere 

Magic Horse, The 

Castile 

Cid and His Daughters, The 

Chile 

Adventures of Alexander Selkirk, The . 

Mr. Hampden's Shipwreck 

‘Young Midshipman David Farragut . 

China 

Boy Who Wanted the Impossible, The {Folk Tale) . 

Chinese Nursery Rhymes 

Girl Who Used Her Wits, The {Folk Tale) 

259 



MY BOOK HOUSE 

China (Continued) 

Road to China, The 1 : 386 

Tragic Story, A Ill: 196 

White Aster V: 373 

Czecho-Slavonia 

Through the Mouse Hole {Folk Tale) Ill: 384 

Damascus 

Arab to His Horse, The II: 313 

Danube 

Duty That Was Not Paid, The Ill: 112 

Two Bad Bargains, The Ill : 369 

Denmark 

Marvelous Pot, The {Folk Tale ) Ill: 69 

See Andersen, Hans Christian, under Authors and Titles Index. 

Detroit 

George Rogers Clark and the Conquest of the Northwest . . .IV: 390 

Princess Nelly and the Seneca Chief IV: 363 

Devonshire 

Christmas Song at Sea, A V:279 

Story of Alfred, the Saxon, The V: 80 

Dolomites 

Boy of Cadore, The IV: 276 

Domremy 

Joan of Arc V: 306 

Ecuador, Coast of 

Young Midshipman David Farragut IV: 354 

Egypt 

Babe Moses, The . . I: 419 

Feast of Tabernacles, The 11:257 

Gideon the Warrior IV: 402 

Joseph and His Brethren V: 294 

Rhodopis and Her Little Gilded Sandals {Folk Tale) . . . .Ill: 262 

England, See also London, Liverpool, Devonshire, Kent. 

Adventures of Alexander Selkirk, The IV: 328 

Adventures of General Tom Thumb, The IV: 163 

Beaumains {Epic) V:327 

Beowulf {Epic) V: 413 

Cat and the Mouse, The {Folk Tale) I: |78 

David Copperfield and Little Em’ly {Charles Dickens) . . . .IV: 262 

Dick Whittington and His Cat {Folk Tale) 11:329 

Goldilocks and the Three Bears {Folk Tale) I: 248 

Jack and the Beanstalk {Folk Tale) II: 371 

Little Red Hen and the Grain of Wheat, The {Folk Tale) . . . I: 60 

Magpie’s Nest, The {Folk Tale) 1:171 

Melilot {Folk Tale) Ill: 242 

Mr. Hampden’s Shipwreck {John Masefield) V: 264 

Renowned and World-Famous Adventures of Punch and Judy, The . Ill: 438 

Secret Door, The, Susan Coolidge IV: 315 

Story of Alfred, the Saxon, The V: 80 

Story of Tom Thumb, The {Folk Tale) II: 262 

Teeny-Tiny {Folk Tale) I: 336 

Wise Men of Gotham, The {Folk Tale) Ill: 82 

Ye Merry Doinges of Robin Hood V: 49 

Young Midshipman David Farragut IV: 356 

Three Sillies, The {Folk Tale) IV: • 80 

Maggie Tulliver Goes To Live with the Gypsies {George Eliot) . . IV: 213 

Richard Feverel and the Hayrick {George Meredith) V: 228 

Little Nell and Mrs. Jarley’s Wax Works {Charles Dickens) . . .Ill: 130 


260 


THE LATCH KEY 


Erin, See Ireland 
Eskimos 

Ikwa and Annowee 

Ethiopia, See also Africa . 

Adventures of Perseus, The .... 

Phaeton 

Finland 

Bikku Matti ( Zacharias Topelius ) 

Kalevala, Land of Heroes (Epic) . 

Snow Queen, The 

Flanders 

How the Finch Got Her Colors . 

Story of Alfred, the Saxon, The 
France 

Across the Fields (Anatole France ) 

Acorn and the Pumpkin, The (La Fontaine) 
Honest Woodman, The (La Fontaine) 

Cinderella (Folk Tale) 

Joan of Arc 

Mock Turtle’s Song, The .... 

Piccola 

Prince Cherry (Folk Tale) .... 
Story of Roland, The (Heroic Tale) 

Story of a Spider, The (J. Henri Fabre) 
Toads and Diamonds (Folk Tale) 

Fujiyama (mountain) 

Moon-Maiden, The 

Gal ap ago Islands 

Young Midshipman David Farragut . 
Galilee 

Babe of Bethlehem, The .... 
Ganges River 

Exile of Rama, The (Epic) .... 
Gascony 

Story of Roland, The ..... 
Genoa 

Story of Christopher Columbus, The . 
Germany 

Fisherman and His Wife, The (Folk Tale) . 

German Cradle Song 

Golden Bird, The (Folk Tale) 

Hansel and Grethel (Folk Tale) . 

Little Girl and the Hare, The (Folk Tale) . 
Shoemaker and the Elves, The (Folk Tale) 
Six Swans, The (Folk Tale) .... 
Sleeping Beauty, The (Folk Tale) 

Snow White and Rose Red (Folk Tale) 
Twelve Dancing Princesses, The (Folk Tale) 


I: 388 

IV: 412 

Ill: 268 

II: 394 
V: 359 
III: 303 

II: 22 

V: 80 

I: 327 
III: 290 
II: 78 

II: 165 
V: 306 
IV: 150 
II: 303 
III: 326 
V: 300 
IV: 189 
Ill: 353 

Ill: 179 

IV: 35 

II: 300 

V: 383 

V: 300 

II: 204 

II: 191 

I: 18 

Ill: 292 

Ill: 45 

I: 241 

I: 346 

Ill: 363 

Ill: 26 

II: 35 

II: 176 



Golgotha 

Two Pilgrims, The . . . ' V: 152 

Greece, See also Aesop under Authors, Titles and Important Characters Index . 

Adventures of Perseus (Myth) IV: 412 

Clytie (Myth) II: 123 

Golden Touch, The (Myth) . Ill: 274 

Home-Coming of Ulysses, The (Epic) V: 423 

Labors of Hercules (Myth) IV: 423 


261 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

Greece (Continued) 

Phaeton {Myth) Ill: 268 

Harlem (Holland) 

Boy Hero of Harlem, The II: 184 

Hawaii 

Fisherman Who Caught the Sun, The ( Folk Tale) Ill: 206 

Hayti 

Mr. Hampden’s Shipwreck V: 264 

Holland 

Boy Hero of Harlem II: 184 

Little Toy Land of the Dutch, The 1 : 334 

Wolfert Webber, or Golden Dreams V: 107 

Holy Land, See also Jerusalem. 

Melting Pot, The V: 178 

Robert Bruce, Scotland’s Hero V: 281 

Hoosac Tunnel 

Pony Engine and the Pacific Express, The .... II 343* II: t342 
Hudson River 

Wolfert Webber, or Golden Dreams V: 107 

Idaho 

Coaly-Bay, the Outlaw Horse V: 218 

Illinois 

George Rogers Clark and the Conquest of the Northwest . . .IV: 390 

India ( See also Tagore, Authors, Titles and Important Characters Index) 

Exile of Rama, The {Epic) V: 383 

East Indian Cradle Song, An I: *77 

Foolish, Timid Little Hare, The {Fable) II: 69 

Sandy Road, The {Fable) II: 200 

Turtle Who Could Not Stop Talking, The {Fable) I: 222 

Indians, American, See Indians under Special Subjects Index 
Indiana 

George Rogers Clark and the Conquest of the Northwest . . .IV: 390 

Iowa 

Night Ride in a Prairie Schooner, A IV : 183 

Ireland {See also Allingham, Goldsmith, Authors, Titles Index) 

Daniel O’Rourke Ill: 74 

Cuchulain, the Irish Hound V: 396 

Prince Fairyfoot, {Irish author, Frances Browne) Ill: 12 

Italy 

Bov of Cadore, The IV: 276 

Columbine and Her Playfellows of the Italian Pantomime . . . Ill : 354 

Gigi and the Magic Ring {Folk Tale) Ill: 337 

Month of March, The {Folk Tale) Ill: 348 

Story of Alfred, the Saxon, The V: 82 

Story of Christopher Columbus, The II : 204 

Venice IV: 283 

Japan 

Little Maid of Far Japan 11:68 

Little Pictures from Old Japan I: 370 

Moon-Maiden, The {Folk Tale) Ill: 179 

Song from “The Flower of Old Japan’’ Ill: 178 

Tongue-Cut Sparrow, The {Folktale) II: 63 

Java 

Amman, a Hero of Java Ill: 197 

Jerusalem and the Holy Land, see also Bible under Special Subjects Index 

The Ragged Peddler {Jewish Folk Tale) Ill: 252 

Melting Pot, The V: 178 

Two Pilgrims, The V; 152 


262 


the latch 

Jordan, River 

Two Pilgrims, The 

Juan Fernandez, Island of 

Adventures of Alexander Selkirk, The . 

Judea 

Babe of Bethlehem, The 

Kent (England) 

Secret Door, The 

Kishineff 


Melting Pot, The V: 173 

Korea 

Pigling and Her Proud Sister ( Folk Tale) . Ill: 191 
Lake Lucerne 

William Tell, The Legend of . . . .V: 290 

Lancaster, Pa. 

Boyhood of Robert Fulton, The . . .IV: 396 

Land of Goshen 

Joseph and His Brethren V: 294 

Land of Top-Knots (Little Russia) 

Two Pilgrims, The V: 152 

Lapland 

Snow Queen, The Ill: 303 

Kalevala V: 359 


Largo (Fifeshire, Scotland) 

Adventures of Alexander Selkirk, The .... 

Libyan Desert (Africa) See also Africa 

Phaeton . 

Lincolnshire (England) 

Ye Merry Doinges of Robin Hood 

Lisbon 

Mr. Hampden’s Shipwreck 

Liverpool 

Adventures of General Tom Thumb, The .... 

Mr. Hampden’s Shipwreck 

Loch Lomond 

Robert Bruce, Scotland’s Hero 

Lgdore 

Cataract of Lodore, The 

London 

Adventures of General Tom Thumb, The .... 

Dick Whittington and His Cat 

Going to London 

Ye Merry Doinges of Robin Hood . . . 

Long Island 

Wolfert Webber, or Golden Dreams 

Louisville 

George Rogers Clark and the Conquest of the Northwest 
Magellan Straits 

Mr. Hampden’s Shipwreck 

Malay Peninsula 

Malayan Monkey Song, A 

Manhattan Island 

Wolfert Webber, or Golden Dreams 

Memphis (Egypt) 

Rhodopis and Her Little Gilded Sandals .... 
Mexico 

Adventures of Alexander Selkirk, The .... 
Child in a Mexican Garden, A 


E 

Y 


168 

IV: 

328 

II: 

300 


315 



. . IV: 328 

. . Ill: 268 

. . V: 50 

. V: 264 

. . IV: 163 

. V: 264 

. V: 281 

. . Ill: 383 

. . IV: 163 

. II: 329 

. . I: 75 

. V: 49 

. . V: 107 

. . IV: 390 

. . V: 264 

. . Ill: 205 

. . V: 107 

. . Ill: 262 

. . IV: 328 

II: 245* II: 


263 


MY BOOK HOUSE 


Michigan 

Story of a Beaver, The Ill: 117 

Monte Video 

Mr. Hampden’s Shipwreck V : 264 

Mt. Tacoma. See Tacoma, Mt. 

Morocco 

Tale of the Cid and His Daughters, The V:316 

Munich 

Nuremberg Stove, The IV: 284 

Mycenae 

Labors of Hercules, The IV: 423 

N AZARETH 

Babe of Bethlehem, The II: 300 

Negro Folk Tales. See South, The 
New England 


Gingerbread Man, The (Folk Tale) I: 121 

Sugar Camp, The IV: 143 

Beyond the Toll-gate II: 434 

Betsy Ross and the First American Flag 11:230* 11: f393 

New York 

Melting Pot, The V: 173 

Wolfert Webber, or Golden Dreams . .V: 107 

Niagara 

Princess Nelly and the Seneca Chief IV: 363 

Nicaragua 

My Nicaragua ( Salomon de la Selva ) Ill: 210 

Nile, River 

Babe Moses, The . I: 419* I: f420 

Rhodopis and Her Little Gilded Sandals Ill: 262 

Northland, The. See also Norway, Sweden, Alaska, North Pole 

Kalevala, Land of Heroes V: 359 

Thor’s Journey to Jotun-Heim IV: 436 

Frithj of the Viking V: 338 

Ikwa and Annowee II : 388 

North Pole 

Mr. Hampden’s Shipwreck V: 264 

Snow Queen, The Ill: 303 

Northwest, The 

George Rogers Clark and the Conquest of the Northwest . . .IV: 390 

Norway 

Boots and His Brothers (Folk Tale) II: 237 

Credit to the School, A ( Dikken Zwilgmeyer ) Ill : 98 

\| Doll i’ the Grass (Folk Tale) . . II: 157* II: fl61 

East o’ the Sun and West o' the Moon ( Folk Tale ) III: 399 

h- 'n Doll Under the Briar Rose-Bush, The {Jot gen Moe) I: 425 

mV hf Frithjof the Viking (Saga) V : 338 

Yvv /Js Johnny and the Three Goats (Folk Tale) . I: f80 

Oeyvind and Marit (Bjornstjerne Bjornson) . 1 : 358 

Princess on the Glass Hill, The (Folk Tale) III: 52 

Sheep and the Pig That Made a Home (Folk Tale) 1 : 279 

Squire’s Bride, The (Folk Tale) . . . . IV: 36 

Stealing of Iduna, The (Myth) . . . I V : 444 

Thor’s Journey to Jotum-heim (My th) . . IV: 436 

Why the Sea is Salt (Folk Tale) .... Ill: 159 

Nottingham (England) 

Wise Men of Gotham, The Ill : 82 

f P Ye Merry Doinges of Robin Hood ... V: 49 



264 


THE LATCH KEY 


IV: 

412 

V: 

423 

IV: 

423 

III: 

123 

V: 

306 

IV: 

163 

IV: 

163 

II: 

82 

III: 

206 

V: 

264 

IV: 

354 


Nuremburg 

Nuremberg Stove, The 

Odessa 

Two Pilgrims, The 

Ohio River 

George Rogers Clark and the Conquest of the Northwest 
Olean Point 

Princess Nelly and the Seneca Chief 

Olympus, Mt. 

Adventures of Perseus, The .... 

Home-Coming of Ulysses, The . 

Labors of Hercules, The .... 

Oregon 

Music-Loving Bears, The .... 

Orleans 

Joan of Arc ; 

Adventures of General Tom Thumb, The 
Oxford 

Adventures of General Tom Thumb, The 
Pacific Ocean 

Battle of the Firefly and the Apes, The 
Fisherman Who Caught the Sun, The 
Mr. Hampden’s Shipwreck .... 

Young Midshipman David Farragut 
Palos (Spain) 

Story of Christopher Columbus, The . 

Papua (New Guinea) 

Bird of Paradise, The . . , . . 

Paris 

Adventures of General Tom Thumb, The . 

Joan of Arc 

Pass of Roncesvalles, The 

Story of Roland, The 

Pass of St. Bernard, The 

Barry, a Dog of the Alps .... 

Story of Alfred, the Saxon, The . 

Pennsylvania. See also Lancaster, Pa. 

Betsy Ross and the First American Flag . 

Boyhood of Robert Fulton, The . 

Princess Nelly and the Seneca Chief . 

Persia 

Magic Horse, The 

Story of Rustem, The (Epic) 

Story of the Talking Bird, The . 

Philippine Islands 

Battle of the Firefly and the Apes, The ( FolkTale ) . 
Portugal 

Story of Christopher Columbus, The 

Pyrenees Mts. 

Story of Roland, The 

Quebec, Province of 

George Rogers Clark and the Conquest of the Northwest 
Rheims 

Joan of Arc 

Rouen 

Joan of Arc 


. IV: 

284 

. V: 

152 

. IV: 

390 

. IV: 

363 



. II: 206 

II: 151* II: fl55 

. IV: 163 

. V: 306 

. V: 300 

. . II: 87 

. V: 80 

II: 230* II: f293 

. IV: 396 

. . IV: 363 

. IV: 40 

. . V: 436 

. . IV: 57 

. . II: 82 

. II: 204 

. . V: 300 

. IV: 390 

. . V:* 306 

. . V: 306 


265 


HOUSE 


MY BOOK 

Roumania 

How the Waterfall Came to the Thirsting Mountain {Folk Tale) . .Ill: 376 

Roumanian Folk Song, A II: 370* 11: f245 

Rugby (England) 

Adventures of General Tom Thumb, The IV: 163 

Russia 

Christening the Baby in Russia II: 218 

Good Comrades of the Flying Ship, The ( Folk Tale) III : 184 

Little-Man-as-Big-As-Your-Thumb (Folk Tale) .IV: 26 

Little Snow Maiden, The (Folk Tale) . . .II: 230 

Melting Pot, The V: 173 

Two Pilgrims, The (Lyof N. Tolstoi) . . . V: 152 

Village Fair, The ( Nicholas Nekrassof) . . . Ill: 182 

Where Love Is There God Is Also (Lyof N. Tolstoi) IV: 194 

Rutli (Switzerland) 

William Tell, The Legend of V: 290 

Salzburg (Austria) 

Duty That Was Not Paid, The Ill: 112 

San Francisco 

Pony Engine and the Pacific Express, The .... 11:343* 11: f342 
Saragossa (Spain) 


Story of Roland, The V: 300 

Schiraz (Persia) 

Magic Horse, The IV: 40 

Scotland 

Bannockburn (Robert Burns) V: 289 

Jamie Watt and His Grandmother’s Tea Kettle . . . 11:147*11: f!51 

Robert Bruce, Scotland’s Hero V: 281 

Wee Robin’s Christmas Seng (Folk Tale) 1:166*1: fl63 

Hie Away (Walter Scott) Ill: 44 

Gathering Song of Donuil Dhu, The (Walter Scott) V: 280 

Wee, Wee Mannie and the Big, Big Coo, The (Folk Tale) . . . I: 235 

Two Bad Bargains, The (Folk Tale) Ill: 369 

Siam 

Memoirs of a White Elephant, The IV: 152 

Smyrna 

Two Pilgrims, The V: 152 

South, The (Negro Folk Tales) 

How Brer Rabbit Met Brer Tar-Baby Ill : 237 

Story of Li’l’ Hannibal II: 138 

Story About Little Rabbits, A II: 161* II: fl45 

Little Rabbit Who Wanted Red Wings, The I: 151 

South Africa 

Afar in the Desert Ill: 226 

Lost Spear, The # Ill: 228 

South America. See Ecuador, Coast of Chile, Brazil and Argentine 
Spain 

Adventures of Alexander Selkirk, The IV: 328 

Adventures of Don Quixote (Miguel de Cervantes) V: 90 

Cid and His Daughters, The (Epic) V: 316 

Little Half-Chick (Folk Tale) I: 304 

Story of Roland, The V : 300 

Story of Christopher Columbus, The II: 204 

Three Wishes, The (Folk Tale) IV: 154 

Spanish Main 

Song of Drake’s Men, A IV: 11 

Sea Shell, The Ill: 164 

Wolfert Webber, or Golden Dreams . . V: 107 



266 




the latch key 


V: 


V: 

III: 


III: 

IV: 

V: 


V: 


Sparta 

Home-Coming of Ulysses, The 
Stirling 

Robert Bruce, Scotland’s Hero V: 

Sweden 

Boy and the Elf, The {Selma Lagerlof) Ill: 

Cap That Mother Made, The {Folk Tale) II: 

Elsa and the Ten Elves {Folk Tale) II : 

Switzerland. See also Alps 
William Tell, The Legend of 
Tacoma, Mt. 

Man Who Loved Hai Quai, The 
Toledo (Spain) 

Cid and His Daughters, The 
Troy 

Home-Coming of Ulysses, The 
Tyrol 

Luck Boy of Toy Valley, The 
Nuremberg Stove, The 
William Tell, The Legend of 
Ulster (Ireland) 

Cuchulain, the Irish Hound 
United States. See also America 

Address to New-Made Citizens, An 

Adventures of General Tom Thumb, The IV : 

Betsy Ross and the First American Flag . .... 11: 230* 11: 

George Rogers Clark and the Conquest of the Northwest . . .IV: 

Young Midshipman David Farragut IV: 

Valencia (Spain) 

Cid and His Daughters, The V: 

Valparaiso (Chile) 

Mr. Hampden’s Shipwreck V: 

Young Midshipman David Farragut IV: 

Vienna 

Duty That Was Not Paid, The Ill: 

Luck Boy of the Toy Valley, The Ill: 

Vincennes (Indiana) 

George Rogers Clark and the Conquest of the Northwest . . .IV: 

Wabash River 

George Rogers Clark and the Conquest of the Northwest . . .IV: 

Wales 

Tudur ap Einion {Folk Tale) Ill 

Adventures of General Tom Thumb, The 
Washington, D. C. 

Adventures of General Tom Thumb, The 
West. See also Northwest 

Coaly-Bay, The Outlaw Horse 
Night Ride in a Prairie Schooner, A . 

Music-Loving Bears, The 
Plains’ Call, The . 

Pony Engine and the Pacific Express, The 
Yarmouth (England) 

David Copperfield and Little Em’ly . 


423 

281 

438 

12 

251 

290 

216 

316 

423 

106 

284 

290 


V: 396 


IV: 


217 

163 

t293 

390 

354 

316 

264 

354 

112 

106 

390 

390 

395 

163 


IV: 

163 

V: 

218 

IV: 

183 

III: 

123 

IV: 

182 

II: 

342 

IV: 

98 




267 


M Y 


BOOK HOUSE 



HISTORICAL INDEX 


^Indicates First Edition f Indicates Second Edition 


It is remarkable, that involuntarily, we always read as superior beings. Universal 
history, the poets, the romancers, do not in their stateliest pictures... any where make us 
feel that we intrude, that this is for our betters ; but rather it is true that in their grand- 
est strokes there we feel most at home. All that Shakespeare says of a king, yonder 
slip of a boy that reads in a comer feels to be true of himself. We sympathize in the 
great moments of history, in the great discoveries, the great resistances, the great pros- 
perities of men . — Ralph Waldo Emerson . 


Abbey of Scone (Scotland) 

Adelaide, Princess 

Albert, Prince (Prince Consort). . . . 

Alcazar Tower 

Alfred, the Saxon 

Amalekites, The 

Aragon, Prince of 

Archbishop Turpin 

Arthur, King 

Asher 

Bavaria, King of 

Bellini 

Benjamin 

Beowulf 

Boone, Daniel 

Bruce, Robert 

Burgundians, The 

Caesar Augustus 

Cambridge, Duke of 

Charlemagne 

Charles I of England 

Charles the Bald 

Chief Corn-Planter 

Children of Israel, The 

Church of James, The (Jerusalem) . . . 
Church of the Resurrection (Jerusalem) 

Cid, The (Ruy Diaz) 

Clark, George Rogers 

Clermont, The . . . „ 

Columbus, Christopher 

Cortes, The (Spanish legislative body) . 

Cyrus, the Persian 

Daniel 

Danes, The 


V: 281; 


1:420*; I: f419 


V 

281 

IV 

163 

IV 

166 

V 

316 

V 

80 

IV 

402 

V 

316 

V 

300 

V 

327 

IV 

402 

IV 

284 

IV 

276 

V 

294 

V 

413 

IV 

390 


289 

V 

306 

II 

300 

IV 

163 

V 

300 

IV 

315 

V 

80 

IV 

363 

V 

402 

V 

152 

V 

152 

IV 

390 

IV 

396 

II 

204 

V 

316 

IV 

408 

IV 

408 

V 

413 


* 


268 


THE LATCH KEY 


Darius, King 

Dauphin Charles VII 

David (David and Goliath) 

Delaware Indians, The 

Devonshire, Duke of 

Diego Columbus 

Doges, The 

Don Alfonso (Spanish king) 

Drake, Sir Francis 

Duchess d’Orleans ( See , Orleans, Duchess, d’) 
Dunois 


IV 

408 

V 

306 

III 

257 

IV 

363 

IV 

163 

II 

204 

IV 

283 

V 

316 

IV 

11 

V 

306 


Earl of Fife V 

Edmund, King of East England V 

Edward I (Longshanks) King V 

Edward II, King V 

Edward III, King II 

Essex Junior, The IV 

Ethelred, King of the West Saxons V 

Everett, Honorable Edward IV 

Farragut, David . * IV 

Feast of Tabernacles II 

Ferdinand, King II 

Franks, The V 

Frigate Essex, The IV 

Frigate Phoebe, The IV 

Fulton, Robert IV 

Gaels, The V 

Ganelon V 

Geat-men, The V 

Gideon IV 

George III, King II: 230* II 

George IV, King II: 230* II 

Gessler 5 V 

Goliath HI 

Guthrum V 


281 

80 

281 

289 
329 
354 

80 

163 

354 

257 

204 

300 

354 

354 

396 

396 

300 

413 

402 

|293 

|293 

290 
257 

80 


Hamilton, Governor 

Hans (The Boy Hero of Harlem) 

Hastings 

Henry, Governor Patrick . . 

Henry II, King 

Henry the Eighth, King. . . . 

Herod 

Hi rsch vogel, Augustin . . . . 

Hrothga, King 

Hubba 

Ingwar . . 

Isabella of Spain, Queen . . 

ISHMAELITES, THE 

Israelites, The 

Jacob (Israel) 

James of Douglas 

Jesse 

Jesus 

Joan of Arc 

Joash the Abiezrite 

Johnson, Caleb 

Johnson, Colonel 

Johnny Appleseed 


11:257; 111:257 


II: 323* 



269 


MY BOOK HOUSE 


Joseph V 

Joseph, husband of the virgin mary II 

Juan Perez II 

Judah V: 294; IV: 408 III 


294 

300 

204 

257 


Kent, Duchess of 

King Arthur ( See Arthur, King) 

King Darius ( See Darius, King) 

King Edward III ( See Edward III, King) 

King Ferdinand of Spain ( See Ferdinand of Spain, King) 
King George IV ( See George IV, King) 

King Henry the Eighth ( See Henry the Eighth, King) 
King Leopold ( See Leopold, King) 

King Louis Philippe ( See Louis Philippe, King) 

King of Portugal ( See Portugal, King of) 


IV 


163 



Leopold, King IV 

Lincoln, Abraham II: 235*; J298 IV 

Lord Percy V 

Louis Philippe, King IV 

Luther Ill 

Lytle, Eleanor (Princess Nelly) IV 


163 

163 

281 

163 

403 

368 


Marsile V 

Mary (Virgin) II 

Massacre of Kishineff V 

Medes and Persians, The IV 

Men of Galloway V 

Midianites, The V: 294 IV 

Moors, The V: 316 V 

Moses 1:420* I 

Mozart, Leopold Ill 


300 

300 

173 

408 

281 

402 

300 

f419 

112 


Naphtali 

Napoleon, Emperor 
Navarre, Prince of 
Nigel Bruce . . . . 

Nina 

Nitokris, Queen . . 
Norsemen, The . . 


... IV 
... IV 
... V 
... V 
... II 
... Ill 
V: 80 IV 


402 

163 

316 

281 

204 

262 

436 


Ojibway (Indians) II: 118* 

Old Glory II : 230* 

Oliver 

Orleans, Duchess d’ 

Osburga 


II 

II 

V 
IV 

V 


fl 17 
f293 
300 
163 
80 


Perez, Juan 



Persians, The Medes and the 

Paris, Count de 

Peter Stuyvesant 

Pharaoh 1:420* f419 

Pharaoh’s Daughter 1:420* 

Philistines 

Phurah 

Pinta 

Polk, President 

Polo, Marco 

Porter, Captain David 

Portugal, King of 

Potipher 

Prince Albert ( See Albert, Prince) 


II 

IV 

IV 

V 

V 
I 

III 

IV 
II 
IV 
II 
IV 
II 

V 


204 

408 

163 

107 

294 

t416 

257 

402 

204 

163 

204 

354 

204 

294 


270 


KEY 


THE LATCH 


Prince of Aragon ( See Aragon, Prince of) 

Prince of Navarre ( See Navarre, Prince of) 

Prince of Wales ( See Wales, Prince of) 

Princess Adelaide ( See Adelaide, Princess) . 

Queen Isabella of Spain, ( See Isabella of Spain, Queen) 
Queen Nitokris ( See Nitokris, Queen) 

Queen Victoria (See Victoria, Queen) 

Ragnar Lodbrog 

Reuben 

Revolution of the Commune 

Rheims Cathedral 

Richard I (Coeur de Lion) 

Robert Bruce 

Robin Hood 

Rogers, Captain Woodes 

Roland 

Ross, Betsy 

Roundheads, The 

Round Table, The 

Rustem 

St. Bernard (Barry) 

St. Luke 

Saint Mark’s (Venice) 

St. Paul 

Santa Maria 

Saracens, The 

Saul 

Saxon Chronicle 

Saxons, The 

Selkirk, Alexander 

Scyldings, The 

Seneca Indians, The 

Shylock’s Bridge (Venice) 

Simon the Pharisee 

Sir Henry de Bohun 

Sir John, the Red Comyn 

Sire de Baudricourt 

Sphinx, The * . . . . 

Statue of Liberty, The 

Straddling, Captain 

Tartars, The 

Tell, William 

Ting, The (Ancient Norse legislative body) 

Titian 

Tsar of Russia 

Ulysses 

Victoria, Queen 

Wagner, Richard 

Wales, Prince of (Edward) 

Wallace, William. 

Walloons, The 

Washington, General 

Watt, James 

Wellington, Duke of 

Whittington, Dick 

Wilson, Woodrow 

Yucef, King of Morocco 

Zebulun 



.... V: 80 

.... V: 294 

.... V: 264 

.... V: 306 

.... Ill: 112 

. V: 281 V: 289 

.... V: 49 

.... IV: 328 

.... V: 300 

II: 230* II: f293 

.... IV: 314 

.... V: 327 

.... V: 436 

. . 87* II: |88 

.... IV: 194 

.IV: 276 IV: 283 

.... IV: 328 

.... II: 204 

.... V: 300 

.... Ill: 257 

.... V: 80 

.... V: 49 

.... IV: 328 

.... V: 413 

.... IV: 363 

.... IV: 283 

.... IV: 194 

.... V: 281 

.... V: 281 

.... V: 306 

.... Ill: 262 

. V: 17 2V : 173 

.... IV: 328 

.... V: 436 

.... V: 290 

.... V: 338 

. . . . IV: 276 

.... V: 173 

.... V: 423 

.... IV: 163 

.... IV: 284 

. . . . IV: 163 

.... V: 289 

.... V: 107 

II: 230* II: f293 

II: 147* II: fl51 

.... IV: 163 

. . . . II: 329 

.... V: 217 

.... V: 316 

. . . . IV: 402 


271 


MY BOOK HOUSE 



SPECIAL SUBJECTS INDEX 


For the use of the mother, father or story-teller whose child asks for a story about a 
little dog, or a fox, or an engine, or for a funny story, or a fairy story, or a true story. 
* First edition. f Second edition. 


Adventure, see also Hero Stories 

Mr. Hampden’s Shipwreck 

Wolfert Webber 

Alligator, see Reptiles 
Alphabet 
rhymes 

Great A, Little A 

ABCDEFG 

Little Goody Two-Shoes 

Animals, see also Birds, Fish, Fowls, Insects, Reptiles 

ANT-EATER 

Right Time to Laugh 

ape, see also monkey 

Battle of Firefly and Apes 

ass, see also donkey 

Ass In the Lion’s Skin 

BAT 

Bat, bat come under my hat 

BEAR 

I Wouldn’t Be a Growler 

What Else the Moon Saw 

Goldilocks and the Three Bears 

Snow White and Rose Red 

Music-Loving Bears 

Dance of the Forest People 

BEAVER 

Hiawatha’s Childhood 

Story of a Beaver 

BUFFALO 

Afar In the Desert 

Legend of the Water Lily II: *118 

The Girl Who Used Her Wits (water buffalo) 

CALF 

There Was An Old Man and He Had a Calf 


V: 

264 

V: 

107 


I: 

55 

I: 

56 

II: 

133 

II: 

112 

II: 

82 

I: 

245 

I: 

28 

I: 

159 

I: 

101 

I: 

248 

II: 

f35 

III: 

123 

III: 

126 

II: 

431 

III: 

117 

III: 

226 

II: 

fl 1 7 

II: 

271 

I: 

19 


272 



THE LATCH KEY 


CAMEL 

Circus Parade II : 

Rustem V : 

CAT 

Bow wow says the dog II: 

Hey Diddle Diddle I : 

Hey My Kitten, My Kitten I : 

Riae Away I : 

Three Little Kittens I : 

Pussy Sits Behind the Log I : 

Wee Robin’s Christmas Song I: *166 I: 

Letter from a Cat I: *315 I: 

Mrs. Tabby Gray I: 

The Cat and the Mouse I : 

Belling the Cat I : 

The Kitten and Falling Leaves I: 

A Hallowe'en Story I: 

Little Gustava I: *162 I: 

Dame Wiggins of Lee II : 

Owl and the Pussy Cat II: 

Dick Whittington and His Cat II: 

The Story of Tom Thumb II: 

Alexander Selkirk IV: 

cow, see also Ox 

Hey Diddle Diddle I: 

There Was a Piper Had a Cow I: 

Moo-cow-moo I: *294 I: 

Wee, Wee Mannie and the Big, Big Coo I: 

The Farmer’s Boy I: *87 I: 

The Purple Cow I: 

Gingerbread Man I: 

Jack and the Beanstalk II: 

The Marvelous Pot Ill: 


386 

436 


10 

8 

12 

15 

24 

fl63 

f313 

180 

+78 

84 

185 

352 

+168 

19 

412 

329 

262 

328 

10 
45 
f234 
235 
t 90 
240 
121 
371 
69 


DEER 


Foolish, Timid, Little Hare 
Afar in the Desert .... 


DOG 


Bow wow, Says the Dog 

Bow wow wow, Whose Dog Art Thou? . . . 

Hey Diddle Diddle 

What the Moon Saw 

Little Gustava I: *162 

Donkey and the Lap-Dog 

Barry, a Dog of the Alps II: * 87 


Christening the Baby 
Right Time to Laugh 


IV: 381 

V: 49 

I 

7 

I 

11 

I 

10 

I 

69 

I 

+168 

I 

111 

II 

t 88 

II 

388 

II 

218 

II 

112 

III 

326 

IV 

85 

IV 

124 



General Tom Thumb 

Maggie Tulliver Goes to Live With the Gypsies 

donkey, see also Ass 

Donkey and the Lap-Dog 

I Am a Gold Lock . 


I: *112 


IV: 

163 

IV: 

231 

I: 

111 

I: 

+110 


273 



MY BOOK HOUSE 



DORMOUSE 

Elf and the Dormouse 

DUCK-BILLED MOLE 

Right Time to Laugh 

eland (South African antelope) 

Afar in the Desert 

ELEPHANT 

Foolish, Timid, Little Hare . . . . 

Circus Parade 

Afar in the Desert 

Memoirs of a White Elephant . . . 

Rustem 

Exile of Rama 

ELK 

Man Who Loved Hai Quai .... 


FAWN 

Fairyfoot 

FIELD MOUSE 

Thumbelisa 

FOX 

The Gingerbread Man 

Peter Rabbit Decides to Change His Name 
Cock, Mouse and Little Red Hen .... 

The Fox and the Stork 

Wee Robin’s Christmas Song 

A Story About Little Rabbits 

The Golden Bird 

Winter Neighbors 

Right Time to Laugh (Flying Fox) . . . 

GIRAFFE 

A Happy Day in the City 

gnu (African antelope with a large ox-like head) 
Afar in the Desert 


I: *166 
II: *161 


GOAT 

Johnny and the Three Goats 
Oeyvind and Marit . . . 
Heidi In the Alpine Pasture 
Alexander Selkirk . . . . 


GROUNDHOG 

Little Rabbit That Wanted Red Wings 

hare, see also Rabbit 

Little Girl and the Hare 

Hare and the Tortoise 

Sheep and the Pig That Made a Home 

Foolish, Timid, Little Hare 

hartebeest (African antelope) 

Afar in the Desert 

HEDGEHOG 

Lullaby for Titania 

HIPPOPOTAMUS 

Afar in the Desert 

Rhodopis 

horse, see also pony 

Farmer’s Boy I: *187 

Gingerbread Man 

Hassan, the Arab, and His Horse * 


I: 

432 

II: 

112 

III: 

226 

II: 

69 

II: 

386 

III: 

226 

IV: 

152 

V: 

436 

V: 

383 

III: 

216 

III: 

12 

II: 

414 

I: 

121 

I: 

375 

I: 

212 

I: 

104 

I: 

fl63 

II: 

fl45 

III: 

292 

V: 

255 

II: 

112 

I: 

396 

Ills 

226 

I: 

80 

I: 

358 

II: 

277 

IV: 

328 

I: 

151 

I: 

241 

I: 

299 

I: 

279 

II: 

69 

III: 

226 

III: 

25 

III: 

226 

III: 

262 

I: 

f90 

I: 

121 

II: 

382 


274 


THE LATCH 

horse — Continued 

The Arab to His Horse 

The Golden Bird 

The Ogre That Played Jackstraws (Hurricane) 

A Night Ride in a Prairie Schooner (wild horse) . . . . 

Coaly Bay 

Rustem . . . 

Cuchlain 

KANGAROO 

Duck and the Kangaroo 

The Right Time to Laugh 

kudu (large, handsome African antelope, having spiral horns) 
Afar in the Desert 

LAMB 

Twin Lambs 

Mary Had a Little Lamb 

Farmer’s Boy I : 

Snow White and Rose Red 

Dame Wiggins of Lee 

Dear Sensibility 

Una and the Red Cross Knight 

LION 

Lion and the Mouse ' 

The Foolish, Timid, Little Hare 

Circus Parade 

A Happy Day in the City 

Una ana the Red Cross Knight 

mole, see also Duck-billed Mole 

Thumbelisa 

monkey, see also Ape 

There Was a Monkey 

I Went Up One Pair of Stairs 

Circus Parade 

Foolish, Timid, Little Hare 

How Night Came 

A Malayan Monkey Song 

mouse, see also Field-Mouse 

Dickory, Dickory, Dock 

Little Red Hen and the Grain of Wheat 

Cat and the Mouse 

Belling the Cat 

Cock, Mouse and Little Red Hen 

Ole-luk-oie 

Lion and the Mouse 

I Saw a Ship A-Sailing 

Gigi 


K 

E Y 

. II 

313 

. Ill 

292 

. Ill 

174 

. IV 

183 


218 


436 


962 

. I: 

373 

. II: 

112 

. Ill: 

226 

I 

255 

I 

254 

87 I 

|90 

. II 

f35 

. II 

19 

. IV 

275 

. V 

12 

. I 

148 

. II 

69 

. II 

386 

. I 

396 

. V 

12 

. II: 

414 

. I 

52 

. I 

55 

. II 

386 

. II 

69 

. Ill 

211 

. Ill 

205 

. I 

10 

I 

60 

. I 

J78 

. I 

84 

I 

212 

I 

fl32 

I 

148 

. I 

23 

. . Ill 

337 


MUSKRAT 

Over in the Meadow 

Peter Rabbit Decides to Change His Name . 

OPOSSUM 

LiT Hannibal 

Right Time to Laugh 

Dance of the Forest People 

How Brer Rabbit Met Brer Tar Baby . . . 
oribi (small African antelope, with straight horns) 
Afar in the Desert 


I: 

64 

I: 

375 

II: 

138 

II: 

112 

III: 

126 

III: 

237 

III: 

226 



275 



Y BOOK HOUSE 



OX 

Frog and the Ox I 

Cock’s on the Housetop I 

Dog in the Manger I 

Sandy Road . II 

Music-Loving Bears Ill 

PANTHER 

Dance of the Forest People Ill 

PIG 

Bow wow, Says the Dog I 

This Little Pig Went to Market I 

Precocious Piggy I: * 132 I 

Dickory, Dickory, Dare I 

Tom, Tom, the Piper’s Son I 

As I Went to Bonner I 

Little Red Hen and the Grain of Wheat I 

Farmer’s Boy I: * 87 I 

Sheep and Pig That Made a Home I 

Owl and the Pussy Cat II 

The Swineherd IV 

PONY 

Little Gray Pony I 

Yankee Doodle I 

Circus Parade II 

PORCUPINE 

The Little Rabbit Who Wanted Red Wings I 

quagga (a striped wild ass akin to the Zebra) 

Afar in the Desert Ill 

rabbit, see also Hare 

The Little Rabbit Who Wanted Red Wings I 

The Tale of Peter Rabbit I 

Peter Rabbit Decides to Change His Name I 

Li’l’ Hannibal II 

Story About Little Rabbits II: *161 II 

Hiawatha’s Childhood II 


raccoon 

Hare and the Torfoise 

Peter Rabbit Decides to Change His Name 

Dance of the Forest People 

RAT 

Bow wow, Says the Dog 

How the Brazilian Beetles Got Their Gorgeous Coats . . . 

Hiawatha’s Childhood 

Snow Queen 

Kalevala 

RHINOCEROS 

Afar in the Desert 

SHEEP 

Cradle Song 

Little Bopeep 

Baa, Baa, Black Sheep 

Clouds 

Sheep and the Pig That Made a Home . . 

Twin Lambs 

Heidi in the Alpine Pasture 

Prince Fairyfoot 


REINDEER 



I 

I 

III 


I: 

II: 

II: 

III: 

V: 

III: 

I 

I 

I 

I 

I 

I 

II 

III 


178 

32 

157 

200 

123 

126 

7 

3 

f76 
12 
22 
45 
60 
t 90 
279 
412 
270 

92 

98 

386 

151 

226 

151 

186 

375 

138 

fl45 

431 

299 

375 

126 

7 

128 

431 

303 

359 

226 

18 

20 

45 

106 

279 

255 

277 

12 


276 



THE LATCH KEY 


sheep — Continued 

Tudur ap Einion 

Joan of Arc 

SKUNK 

Peter Rabbit Decides to Change His Name 

springbok (South African gazelle noted for its habit of springing 
suddenly and lightly into the air) 

Afar in the Desert 


III: 

395 

V: 

306 

I: 

375 

III: 

226 


SQUIRREL 

Squirrels That Live in a House . . I : *268 

Whisky Frisky 

Nutcracker and Sugardolly 

Hiawatha's Childhood 

TIGER 

Foolish, Timid, Little Hare 

The Circus Parade 

Amman 

WHALE 

Daniel O’Rourke 

WOLF 

The Boy Who Cried Wolf 

Johnny and The Three Goats 

How Brer Rabbit Met Brer Tar Baby . . 


I 

t269 

I 

t268 

II 

91 

II 

431 

II 

69 

II 

386 

III 

197 

III: 

74 

I 

372 

I 

f80 

III 

237 



WOODCHUCK 

Hare and Tortoise 

ZEBRA 

Afar in the Desert 

Ant, see Insects 
Ape, see Animals 
Arbor day, see also Trees 

Johnny Appleseed 

Planting the Apple Tree . . . . 
Shaking of the Pear-Tree . . . 

Trees 

Arithmetic Rhymes 

One, Two, Buckle My Shoe . . . 

Over In the Meadow 

Ten Little Injuns 

A.RT 

The Boy of Cadore (Titian) . . * 

The Nuremberg Stove 

Ass, see Animals 
Autumn 

Come Little Leaves 

Majorie’s Almanac 

Shaking of the Pear-Tree . . . . 
Going A-Nutting 

Balloon 

What’s the News of the Day? . . 
Steamboat and the Locomotive . 
Barber Shop 

Hippety Hop to the Barber Shop . 

The Barber’s 

Bat, see Animals 
Bear, see Animals 
Beaver, see Animals 


II: *323 
II: *328 


I: *339 


II: *89 


I: 

299 

III: 

226 


II: 

f352 

II: 

f357 

III: 

142 

V: 

263 

I: 

57 

I: 

64 

I: 

f345 

IV: 

276 

IV: 

284 

I: 

f326 

II: 

260 

III: 

142 

IV: 

149 

I: 

25 

IV: 

117 

I: 

16 

II: 

t328 


277 


MY BOOK HOUSE 


Bee, see Insects 
Beetle, see Insects 
Bible 

A Psalm of Praise (Psalm 100) 

Babe Moses 

Noah’s Ark 

A Psalm of David (Psalm 23) 

Babe of Bethlehem 

Feast of Tabernacles 

David and Goliath 

Gideon, the Warrior 

Daniel in the Lions’ Den 

Joseph and His Brethren 

Birds, see also Fowls 

BIRD OF PARADISE 

Bird of Paradise 

BLACKBIRD 

There Were Two Blackbirds 

The Magpie’s Nest 

BLACK SWAN 

Right Time to Laugh 

BLUEBIRD 

Over In the Meadow 

How the Finch Got Her Colors 

BOBOLINK 

Robert of Lincoln 

BUTCHER BIRD 

The Lost Spear 

BUZZARD 

Peter Rabbit Decides To Change His Name 

CASSOWARY 

Bird of Paradise 

CEDAR BIRD 

Winter Neighbors 

COCKATOO 

Bird of Paradise 

CROW 

Peter Rabbit Decides To Change His Name 

Crow and Pitcher 

Over In the Meadow 

Bow wow, Says the Dog 

CUCKOO 

Bow Wow, Says the Dog . 
Little Maid of Far Japan . 
Hansel and Grethel . . . 

DOVE 

Magpie’s Nest 

Strange Lands 

Little Gustava 

EAGLE 

Snow White and Rose Red 
Daniel O’Rourke .... 

EMU 

Right Time to Laugh . . 

FINCH 

How the Finch Got Her Colors 



I: *419 
I: *420 


II: *151 


II: *151 


II: *151 


I: *162 


I: 

: f423 

I 

f419 

I 

295 

II 

f256 

II 

300 

II 

257 

III 

257 

IV 

402 

IV 

408 

V 

294 


II: 

fl55 

I: 

35 

I: 

171 

II: 

112 

I: 

64 

II: 

22 

III: 

122 

III: 

228 

I: 

375 

II: 

fl55 

V: 

255 

II: 

1-155 

I: 

375 

I: 

13() 

I: 

64 

I: 

7 

I: 

7 

II: 

68 

III: 

45 

I: 

171 

I: 

161 

I: 

fl68 

II: 

f35 

III: 

74 

II: 

112 

II: 

22 


278 


HE LATCH KEY 


FLAMINGO 

The Exile of Rama V : 

HAWK 

Wee Robin’s Christmas Song I: *166 I: 

HONEYSUCKER 

Bird of Paradise II: *151 II: 

HORNBILL 

Bird of Paradise II: *151 II: 

HUMMING BIRD 

The Humming Bird Ill: 

Alexander Selkirk I V : 

JAY 

Jay and the Peacocks I: 

Strange Lands I: 

LiT Hannibal II: 

Winter Neighbors V: 

LARK 

Fairy That Judged Her Neighbors II: 

LYRE BIRD 

Right Time To Laugh II: 

MAGPIE 

Magpie’s Nest I : 

OSTRICH 

Afar in the Desert Ill: 

OWL 

There Was An Owl I: 

The Owl II: 

Owl’s Answer to Tommy II: 

Owl and the Pussy Cat II: 

Winter Neighbors V: 

PARROT 

Right Time to Laugh II : 

How the Brazilian Beetles Got their Gorgeous Coats .... II : 
Bird of Paradise II: *151 II: 

PARTRIDGE 

LiT Hannibal II: 

PEACOCK 

Jay and Peacocks I : 

Maggie Tulliver Goes to Live With the Gypsies IV: 

PHEASANT 

Hiawatha’s Fasting IV: 

Robin Hood V : 

ROBIN 

Little Robin Redbreast I : 

A Robin and a Robin’s Son I: 

Wee Robin’s Christmas Song I : 

Sir Robin I : 

LiT Hannibal II: 

Brooklet’s Story. II: * 47 II: 

SANDPIPER 

The Sandpiper IV: 

SEA GULL 

The Sea Gull IV: 

Little Gulliver IV : 

SNOW BUNTING 

-> Winter Neighbors V: 


383 

fl63 

tl55 

fl55 

289 

328 

160 

161 

138 

255 

358 

112 

171 

226 

38 

24 

25 
412 
255 

112 

128 

tl55 

138 

160 

213 

381 

49 

11 

24 

163 

114 
138 

t 52 

115 

84 

85 

265 


279 


MY BOOK HOUS 



WOODPECKER 


SPARROW 


Magpie’s Nest 


STARLING 

Magpie’s Nest . .. . ... . . . 

STORK 

The Little Toy Land of the Dutch 

SWALLOW 


SWAN 

Ole-luk-oie 


THRUSH 

Magpie’s Nest 
Old Shellover 

WHITE EAGLE 


WREN 

As Little Jenny Wren 

There Was An Old Man With a Beard 

Wee Robin’s Christmas Song I:* 166 

Squirrels That Live In a House . I: *268 

Bird of Paradise, see Birds 
Blackbird, see Birds 


r s 

; e 

I: 

52 

I: 

171 

II: 

62 

II: 

63 

V: 

255 

I: 

171 

I: 

334 

II: 

414 

I: 

fl32 

III: 

363 

I: 

171 

I: 

150 

II: 

112 

V: 

255 

I: 

26 

I: 

105 

I: 

tl63 

I: 

t269 


Black Swan, see Birds 
Bluebird, see Birds 


Boats, see also Sea 

I Saw a Ship A-Sailing I: 23 

I Saw Three Ships ■ , . . 1 : 40 

Where Go the Boats? I: *234 I: f232 

Paper Boats 1 : 233 

A Credit to the School . Ill: 98 

Two Bad Bargains . . Ill: 369 

Good Comrades of the Flying Ship Ill: 184 

Adventures of Yehl (Alaskan canoe) Ill: 220 

The Strong Boy {Indian canoe) . . Ill: 165 

Fisherman Who Caught the Sun (Hawaiian canoe) Ill: 206 

The Lost Spear (African canoe) Ill: 228 

Enchanted Island (Turkish) . . . . IV: 12 

A Song of Drake’s Men (Elizabethan English) IV : 11 

Venice (gondola) IV: 283 

Robert Fulton (first steamboat) . . IV: 396 

Steamboat and the Locomotive IV: 117 

General Tom Thumb (early side-paddle steam and sailing 

vessel) • •• • ••*•••••••••••• IV i 164 

Story of Alfred (Viking ship) V: 80 

Firth jof (Viking) V: 338 

Beowulf (Viking) V: 413 

Melting Pot (modern ocean liner) V: 173 

Ulysses V: 359 

Kalevala V: 423 


280 



THE LATCH KEY 



ROMAN TRIREME 
Vessel with three 
banks of oars 


VIKING SHIP 
Used by the Norsemen 
in raiding England 


QUEEN ELIZABETH'S FLAGSHIP 
THE ARK ROYAL 

Built in 1587 for Sir Walter Raleigh 
Purchased by Queen Elizabeth and used 
as her flagship in the fight with the 
Spanish Armada, 1588 


STATE BARGE OF THE 
DOGE OF VENICE 
Used in ceremony of 
Wedding the Adriatic 


EARLY STEAM AND 
SAILING VESSEL 
The first ocean steamship 


28l 




HOUSE 


MY BOOK 



Bobolink, see Birds 
Brook 

Brooklet’s Story. .II: * 47 II: 

The Brook Song .II. *52 II: 

Brownies, see Fairy Tales 
Buffalo, see Animals 
Butcher-bird, see Birds 
Butterfly, see Insects 
Buzzard, see Birds 
Calf, see Animals 
Camel, see Animals 

Candy, Cake, Pastry, Etc. 

Hippety Hop to the Barber Shop . 

Simple Simon 

Handy Spandy 

Smiling Girls, Rosy Boys .... 

Little Jack Homer 

Little King Boggin 

A Pie Sat On a Pear Tree .... 

Charley Nag 

When Good King Arthur .... 

I Saw a Ship A-Sailing 

Going To See Grandmamma . . 

Tea Party I 

Gingerbread Man 

Ole-luk-oie 

Sugar Plum Tree 

Nutcracker and Sugardolly II 

The Story of Tom Thumb (batter pudding and frumenty) . 


The Sugar Camp (making Maple Sugar) 
Cassowary, see Birds 
Cat, see Animals 
Cataract 


' " . »» . 

^(©1 P)f 

I 

16 

I 

34 

I 

21 

I 

19 

I 

27 

I 

22 

I 

41 

I 

47 

I 

44 

I 

23 

I 

58 

I 

59 

I 

121 

I 

fl32 

I 

144 

II 

91 

II 

262 

III 

45 

III 

178 

IV 

143 

III 

383 

III 

376 

V 

383 


Caterpillar, see Insects 
Cedar bird, see Birds 
Chickens, see Fowls 
Childhoods of Literature 

Little Nell and Mrs. Jarley’s Wax Works, from Old Curios- 
ity Shop Ill: 

David Copperfield and Little Em’ly, from David Copperfield IV : 
Maggie Tulliver Goes to Live With the Gypsies, from The . 

Mill on the Floss IV: 

Richard Feverel and the Hay-rick, from The Ordeal of ... . 

Richard Feverel V : 

Christmas 

Wee Robin’s Christmas Song I: *166 II 

Shoemaker and the Elves I 

Babe of Bethlehem II 

Piccola II 

Nutcracker and Sugardolly II 

Pony Engine and Pacific Express II 

Frithjof (Pagan Yule) V 


130 

98 

213 

229 

fl63 

346 

300 

303 

91 

342 

338 


282 


THE LATCH KE 


Circus 


City 


City Smoke 

Indian Children II: 


Clouds 


Clouds 

Clouds and Waves 


Clowns 


Columbine and Her Playfellows of the Italian Pantomime 


Cobwebs 


There Was An Old Woman 
Cobwebs 


Cockatoo, see Birds 
Columbus 

Story of Christopher Columbus 
Conundrums 

Little Nanny Etticoat . . . . 


Hickamore, Hackamore 
Counting Out Rhymes 


Country, see Farm 
Cow, see Animals 
Crab, see Fish 
Crawfish, see Fish 
Cricket, see Insects 
Cuckoo, see Birds 

Cumulative Stories, see also Repetitive Stories 

The 44 Wake-Up ” Story 

The Cat and the Mouse 


The Key of the Kingdom 
The Gingerbread Man . 
Deer, see Animals 
Desert 


Dog, see Animals 
Dolls 

Doll Under the Briar Rose-bush 


K E 

Y 

. . 11 : 

386 

. . IV: 

163 

. . I: 

396 

. . I: 

417 

117 II: 

fl21 

. . II: 

434 


251 

. . IV: 

116 

. . I: 

106 

. . I: 

107 

. . Ill: 

273 

. . Ill: 

209 

. . II: 

386 

. Ill: 

354 

. . Ill: 

438 

. . I: 

31 

. . I: 

231 

. . IV: 

193 

. . II: 

204 

. . I: 

31 

. . I: 

37 

. . I: 

54 

. . I: 

50 








71 


t78 


t80 


99 


121 


200 

. . II: 

30g 

. . Ill: 

226 

. . I: 

425 

. . II: 

91 

. . Ill: 

86 


Donkey, see Animals 
Dormouse, see Animals 


283 


IV: 

412 

V: 

12 

IV: 

163 

j r~ 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

Dove, see Birds 
Dragons 

The Adventures of Perseus 

Una and the Red Cross Knight 

Duck, see Fowls 
Duck-billed mole, see Animals 

Dwarfs, Real. (For imaginative Dwarfs see Fairy Tales) 

General Tom Thumb 

Eagle, see Birds 
Easter 

The Story of a Caterpillar .II: * 41 II: f 64 
Eel, see Fish 
Eland, see Animals 
Elements, see Wind, Rain, Snow etc. 

Elephant, see Animals 
Elk, see Animals 
Elves, see Fairy Tales 
Emu, see Birds 

Engines 

Little Engine That Could .... I: 193 
Pony Engine and Pacific Express II: 342 
Jamie Watt and His Grandmother’s Tea Kettle. . .II: *147 



Steamboat and Locomotive 


Epics 


The Fairy Queen (Una and the Red Cross Knight) 
Frith j of 


Fables 

A rcnp 

Belling the Cat . . . 
The Fox and the Stork 


The Two Crabs 

The Wind and the Sun 

The Crow and the Pitcher 

The Milkmaid and Her Pail 

The Lion and the Mouse 

The Dog in the Manger I 

The Jay and the Peacocks 

The Frog and the Ox 

The Ass in the Lion’s Skin 

The Hare and the Tortoise 

The Boy Who Cried Wolf 





sllipl 

II 

fl51 

III 

64 

IV 

116 

IV 

117 

IV 

123 

IV 

176 

V 

327 

V 

413 

V 

316 

V 

396 

V 

12 

V 

12 

V 

359 

V 

423 

V 

383 

V 

300 

V 

436 

V 

373 

I 

84 

I 

104 

I 

111 

I 

113 

I 

119 

I 

130 

I 

146 

I 

148 

I 

157 

I 

160 

I 

178 

I 

245 

I 

299 

I 

372 


284 


THE LATCH KEY 


EAST INDIAN 

The Turtle Who Could Not Stop Talking I: 222 

The Foolish, Timid, Little Hare II: 69 

The Sandy Road II: 200 

LA FONTAINE 

The Honest Woodman II: 78 

The Acorn and the Pumpkin Ill: 290 

Fairy Tales 
brownies 

The Owl’s Answer to Tommy II: 25 

Brownies in the Toy Shop II : 58 

DWARFS 

Snow White and Rose Red II : f35 

Peeny Pen Pone II: 182 

Nutcracker and Sugardolly II: 91 

Why the Sea Is Salt Ill: 159 

The Little Man As Big As Your Thumb IV: 26 


elves 

The Elf and the Dormouse . . . . , 

Shoemaker and the Elves 

Elsa and the Ten Elves 

The Boy and the Elf 

T? A TDTI7C 

Fairy and Child I: *313 

Cinderella 

Twelve Dancing Princesses 

The Story of Tom Thumb 

Blunder - 

Toads and Diamonds . . . .II: *353 
Fairy Who Judged Her Neighbors. . 

Jack and the Beanstalk 

Thumbelisa 

Prince Fairyfoot 

Sleeping Beauty 

Mr. Moon 

Prince Harweda 

Hansel and Grethel 

The Three Wishes 

The Lost Spear 

Melilot. 

Prince Cherry 

Gigi 

Six Swans 

How the Waterfall Came 

Through a Mouse-hole 

Tudur ap Einion 

GIANTS 

The Selfish Giant 

Jack and the Beanstalk 

The Strong Boy . 

Thor’s Journey To Jotun-heim. . . . 
Doll i’ the Grass 

MIRACULOUS STORIES WITH NO FAIRIES 

Princess on the Glass Hill 

The Marvelous Plot 

The Twelve Months 


I: 432 

I: 346 

II: 251 

III: 408 



285 


MY BOOK 

miraculous stories with no fairies — Continued 
Good Comrades of the Flying Ship . . . 

Pigling 

Amman 

Adventures of Yehl 

The Golden Bird 

Snow Queen 

Month of March 

The Enchanted Island 

The Magic Horse 

The Talking Bird 

ogres 

The Ogre That Played Jackstraws . . . 

TROLLS 

East o’ the Sun and West o’ the Moon . 

WITCH 

Hansel and Grethel 

WIZARD 

How the Waterfall Came 

The Magic Horse 

Farm 

My Maid Mary 

Willie Boy . 

The Farmer’s Boy 

Little Maid, Pretty Maid 

The Twin Lambs 

Farewell to the Farm 

Shaking of the Pear-Tree 

Maggie Tulliver (Garum Firs) 

Evening at the Farm 

The Sugar Camp 

Fawn, see Animals 
Field-Mouse, see Animals 
Finch, see Birds 
Firefly, see Insects 
Fish 

Over in the Meadow 

Boy Who Wanted the Impossible . . . 
crabs 

The Two Crabs 

CRAWFISH 

Hiawatha’s Fasting 

DOLPHINS 

Adventures of Perseus 

EEL 

Right Time to Laugh 

LOBSTERS 

Mock Turtle’s Song 

OYSTERS 

Mock Turtle’s Song 

PERCH 

Hiawatha’s Fasting 

PIKE 

Hiawatha’s Fasting 

PORPOISE 

Hiawatha’s Fasting 

Mock Turtle’s Song 


HOUSE 


III: 

184 

III: 

191 

III: 

197 

III: 

220 

III: 

292 

III: 

303 

III: 

348 

IV: 

12 

IV: 

40 

IV: 

57 

III: 

174 

III: 

399 

III: 

45 

III: 

376 

IV: 

40 

I: 

35 

I: 

28 

II: 

t 90 

I: 

147 

I: 

255 

II: 

217 

III: 

142 

IV: 

213 

IV: 

142 

IV: 

143 


I: 

64 

I: 

388 

I: 

113 

IV: 

381 

IV: 

412 

II: 

112 

IV: 

150 

IV: 

150 

IV: 

381 

IV: 

381 

IV: 

381 

IV: 

150 


286 


THE L A T 

C 

H 

K 

E Y 

SEA HORSE 

Sea Song from the Shore 




f325 

SNAIL 




Four and Twenty Tailors 



.... I 

29 

Old Shellover 




150 

Lullaby for Titania 



.... Ill 

25 

The Mock Turtle’s Song 



.... IV 

150 

STAR-FISH 





Two Crabs 



.... I 

113 

David Copperfield 



.... IV 

98 

STURGEON 





Hiawatha’s Fasting 



.... IV 

381 

TROUT 





Boy’s Song 




105 

WHALE 





Daniel O’Rourke 




74 

WHITING 





Mock Turtle’s Song 




150 

Flamingo, see Birds 

Flowers 

Daffy down dilly 




13 

When Daffodils Begin to Peer .... 



.... I 

38 

Little Girl, Little Girl 



.... I 

26 

How Does My Lady’s Garden Grow? 



.... I 

13 

March Winds and April Showers . . 



.... I 

51 

Baby Seed Song 



.... I 

221 

Who Likes the Rain? 



.... I 

109 

Spring 



.... I 

302 

Across the Fields 



.... I 

327 

Come Little Leaves 



.... I 

f326 

Squirrels That Live in a House . . . , 



. I: *268 I 

t269 

Rosy Posy 



.... I 

192 

Child in a Mexican Garden 



.11: *245 II 

t 87 

Heidi in the Alpine Pasture 



.... II 

277 

My Nicaragua 



.... Ill 

210 

Clytie (sunflower) 



.... II 

123 

Legend of the Water Lily 



II: *118 II 

117 

Her Dairy 



.... Ill 

81 

Kids 



.... Ill 

96 

In the Lane 



.... Ill 

95 

Lost Spear 



.... Ill 

228 

Flying Fox, see Animals 

Fog 

The Fog 



.... Ill: 

251 


Folk Tales, see General Index, see also Geographical Index under 
various countries 


Forest, see also Tropical Jungle 


Goldilocks and the Three Bears 

I: 

248 

Squirrels That Live in a House 

I: *268 I: 

f269 

Snow White and Rose Red 

II: 

f35 

Christening the Baby in Russia 



Hiawatha's Childhood 

II: 

431 

Prince Fairyfoot 

Ill: 

12 

Sleeping Beauty 

Ill: 

26 

Hansel and Grethel 

Ill: 

45 

Dance of the Forest People 

Ill: 

126 

The Twelve Months 

Ill: 

145 

Una and The Red Cross Knight 

V: 

12 


287 


MY BOOK HOUSE 


Fourth Of July, see also Patriotism under Index According to Ethical 
Theme. 

The Boyhood of Robert Fulton IV : 

Fowls 


CHICKENS, COCKS AND HENS 


— 7M — 

Hickety, Pickety 

The Cock's On the Housetop 


I 

I 


Little Red Hen and the Grain of Wheat . 

• • . . 

I 


Clucking Hen 

I: * 78 

I 


Farmer’s Boy 

I: * 87 

I 

Jjf 

Little Gustava 

I: *168 

I 

There Was an Old Man With a Beard . 


1 


Cock, Mouse and Little Red Hen . . . 


I 


Sheep and Pig That Made a Home . . 


I 

fir TURKEY 

Little Half-Chick 

Maggie Tulliver 


I 

IV 


DUCK 

Bow Wow, Says the Dog I 

Who Likes the Rain? I 

Little Red Hen and Grain of Wheat I 

Farmer’s Boy I: * 87 I 

Little Rabbit Who Wanted Red Wings I 

Cock’s On the Housetop I 

Shingebiss I: *340 I 

Duck and the Kangaroo I 

I Saw a Ship A-Sailing I 

The Duck’s Ditty II 

GOOSE 

Goosey, Goosey, Gander I 

Intery, Mintery, Cutery Corn I 

I Wouldn’t Be a Growler I 

Sheep and Pig That Made a Home I 

Turtle Who Could Not Stop Talking I 

Boy Hero of Harlem II 

Daniel O’Rourke Ill 


396 


12 
32 
60 
f 83 
f 90 
fl68 
105 
212 
279 
304 
213 

7 

109 

60 

f90 

151 

32 

t339 

373 

23 

111 

10 

50 

159 

279 

222 

184 

74 


GUINEA HEN 

Li’l’ Hannibal II: 

Maggie Tulliver Goes to Live With the Gypsies IV: 

TURKEY 

Farmer’s Boy I: * 87 I: 

Owl and the Pussy Cat II : 

Fox, see Animals 
Frog, see Reptiles 
Frost 


Fruit 


Funny Stories, see Humorous Stories 
Games To Be Played 

Dance, Little Baby I: 

See Saw Sacaradown I; 


138 

213 

t 90 
412 


Jack Frost 



I: 

210 

Little Snow Maiden 

II: 

*293 

II: 

f230 

Up in a Green Orchard 



I: 

19 

Johnny Appleseed 

II: 

*323 

II: 

f352 

Planting of the Apple Tree 

II: 

*328 

II: 

f357 

Shaking of the Pear-Tree 



III: 

142 

The Stealing of Iduna 



IV: 

444 


288 


the latch ke 


Games To Be Played — Continued 

Pat-a-cake I 

This Little Pig * j 

Johnny Shall Have a New Bonnet ...'!.*!!!!!!! I 

Ring Around the Roses I 

Pease-Porridge Hot I 

Ride A Cock-Horse ’’.*[[ j 

This is the Way the Ladies Ride I 

To Market, to Market I 

See-Saw, Margery Daw I 

How Many Miles Is It to Babylon? I 

Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush I 

Going to London I 

Tale of a Black Cat I 

Gardens, see also Flowers 

My Lady’s Garden I 

The Tea Party I 

Child In a Mexican Garden II: *245 II 

Wolfert Webber V 


Y 


3 

3 

4 

5 
5 
9 
9 

21 

35 

37 

43 

75 

115 

13 

59 

|87 

107 


Giants, see also Fairy Tales 

Una and the Red Cross Knight (Orgoglio) . . 

Cuchulain 

Giraffe, see Animals 
Gnu, see Animals 
Goose, see Fowls 
Grasshopper, see Insects 
Groundhog, see Animals 
Guinea Hen, see Fowls 
Gypsies 

Meg Merrilies 

Maggie Tulliver Goes to Live With the Gypsies 
Hallowe’en 

A Hallowe’en Story 

Judging By Appearances 

Hare, see Animals 
Hartebeest, see Animals 
Hawk, see Birds 
Hedgehog, see Animals 
Hero Stories 
true 

The Story of Christopher Columbus 

David and Goliath 

Gideon 

Daniel 

The Adventures of Alexander Selkirk 

Young Midshipman David Farragut 

George Rogers Clark 

The Story of Alfred, the Saxon 

Robert Bruce 

Joseph and His Brethren 

PARTLY TRUE AND PARTLY IMAGINATIVE 

The Boy Hero of Harlem 

William Tell 

Roland 

Rustem 

The Cid 


V: 12 

V: 396 



289 


MY BOOK HOUSE 


IMAGINATIVE 

Little Man as Big as Your Thumb IV 

Knights of the Silver Shield IV 

Adventures of Perseus IV 

Labors of Hercules IV 

Robin Hood V 

Home-coming of Ulysses V 

Beaumains, the Kitchen Knight V 

Frith j of V 

Beowolf V 

Cuchulain V 

Exile of Rama V 

Heroine Stories 
true 

Princess Nelly and the Seneca Chief . IV: 

Joan of Arc V: 

IMAGINATIVE 

The Talking Bird IV: 

Hippopotamus, see Animals 
Honeysucker, see Birds 

Holidays, see Arbor Day, Christmas, Easter, Hallowe’en, Fourth of July, 

May Day, Thanksgiving, Lincoln, Columbus, Washington, Etc, 
Hornbill, see Birds 
Hornet, see Insects 
Horse, see Animals 
Humming Bird, see Birds 
Humorous Stories Or Poems 

Three Jovial Huntsmen I 

The Donkey and the Lap-Dog ... I 
There Was an Old Man With a Beard I 

The Purple Cow I 

“It” I 

The Du<bk and the Kangaroo I 

Teeny Tiny I 

Quick-Running Squash I 

The Firefly and the Apes II 

Bikku Matti II 


26 

204 

412 
423 

49 

423 

327 

338 

413 
396 
383 


363 

306 

57 



Owl and the Pussy Cat 




. 11 

410 

. 11 

412 

. 11 

182 

. 11 

342 

. hi 

438 

. hi 

174 

. hi 

64 

. hi 

81 

. hi 

85 

. hi 

237 

. hi 

74 

. hi 

82 

. hi 

154 

. hi 

196 

. hi 

290 


36 


80 

. IV 

117 

. IV 

150 

. IV 

275 


290 


THE L A T 

C 

H 

K 


E Y 

Humorous Stories Or Poems — Continued 






The Swineherd 




IV 

27o 

Emperor’s New Clothes 




V 

75 

Don Quixote 




V 

90 

Independence Day, see Fourth of July 






Indians 






Ten Little Injuns 



. I: *339 

I 

f345 

Shingebiss 



. I: *340 

I 

f339 

Legend of the Water Lily 



.11: *118 

II 

fl 17 

Indian Children 



.11: *117 

II 

1 12 1 

Hiawatha’s Childhood 




II 

431 

Man Who Loved Hai Quai 




III 

216 

The Strong Boy 




III 

165 

Adventures of Yehl 




III 

220 

Hiawatha’s Fasting 




IV 

381 

Princess Nelly and the Seneca Chief , 




IV 

363 

George Rogers Clark 




IV 

390 

Insects 






ant 






Squirrels That Live In a House . . . 



. I:* 268 

I: 

t269 

Story of a Caterpillar 



.11: * 41 

II: 

t 46 

BEE 






Bumie Bee 




I: 

f32 

Over in the Meadow 




I: 

64 

Squirrels That Live In a House . . . 



.1: *268 

I: 

|269 

Story of a Caterpillar 



.11: * 41 

II 

f46 

How Doth the Little Busy Bee . . , 




II: 

137 

In the Lane 




III: 

95 

BEETLE 






Mother Spider 




I: 

228 

How the Brazilian Beetles Got Their Gorgeous Coats .... 

II: 

128 

Lullaby for Titania 




III: 

25 

BUTTERFLY 






Squirrels That Live In a House . . . 



. I: *268 

I: 

f269 

White Butterflies 




I: 

225 

To a Butterfly 



.11: * 46 

II: 

t 51 

The Lost Spear 




III: 

228 

CATERPILLAR 






Story of a Caterpillar 



.11: * 41 

II: 

t 46 

CRICKET 






Over In the Meadow 




I: 

64 

Squirrels That Live In a House . . . 



.1: *268 

I: 

f269 

Come Little Leaves 




I: 

: 326 

Mr. Moon 




III: 

: 32 

DARNING-NEEDLE 






Kids 




III: 

: 96 

FIREFLY 






Battle of Firefly and Apes .... 




II 

82 

Twinkling Bugs 




II 

86 

The Moon-Maiden 




III 

179 

GRASSHOPPER 






Grasshopper Green 




I 

226 

Mother Spider 




I 

228 

An Explanation of the Grasshopper 




II 

34 

Fairy Who Judged Her Neighbors . 




II 

358 

HORNET 






In the Lane 




III: 95 


291 


BOOK HOUSE 


M Y 


LADY-BIRD 

Fairy Forests Ill : 

MAY-BUG 

Thumbelisa II : 

MOSQUITO 

Battle of Firefly and Apes II : 

MOTH 

Story of a Caterpillar II: * 41 II: 

SPIDER 

Over In the Meadow I : 

Mother Spider I : 

Lullaby for Titania Ill : 

Story of a Spider IV : 

Gossamer Spider IV : 

Robert Bruce V: 

Inventions, see Inventiveness under Index According to Ethical Theme 
Jay, see Birds 
Jungle, see Tropical Jungle 
Kangaroo, see Animals 
Kudu, see Animals 
Lady-Bird, see Insects 
Lakes 


The Honest Woodman . . . 

II: 

78 

Legend of the Water Lily. . . 

. .11: *118 II; 

fl 17 

Hiawatha’s Childhood . . . 

II: 

431 

Hiawatha’s Fasting .... 

IV: 

381 


Lamb, see Animals 
Lark, see Birds 
Lighthouse 

Little Gulliver IV 


236 

414 

82 

f 46 

64 

228 

25 

189 

193 

281 



Lincoln 

Two Little Birds and a Great Man II: *235 II: |298 

Lion, see Animals 
Lizard, see Reptiles 
Lobster, see Fish 
Logging 

The Booms IV: 124 


Lullabies 

Rock a Bye Baby I : 

Sleep, Baby, Sleep I: 

Sleepy Song I : 

Rockaby Lullaby I : 

Sweet and Low I : 

German Cradle Song I : 

Wynken, Blynken and Nod I: *324 I: 

Sugar Plum Tree I: 

Fairy and Child I:* 313 I: 

Roumanian Folk Song II: *370 II: 

Lullaby for Titania Ill: 

Lyre-bird, see Birds 
Manual Training 

The Luck Boy of Toy Valley Ill : 

May-bug, see Insects 
May Day, see also Spring 

Song; On a May Morning Ill: 

Robin Hood and Maid Marian V : 


2 

4 

6 

8 

17 

18 
1 141 

144 

f322 

f245 

25 


106 


31 

49 


292 


THE LATCH KEY 


Meadows 

Over In the Meadow I 

Across the Fields I 

How the Waterfall Came Ill 

Mole, see Animals 
Monkey, see Animals 

Monsters, see also Dragons and Fairy Tales 

Prince Cherry Ill 

Labors of Hercules (Hydra) IV 

Adventures of Perseus (Gorgons) IV 

Una and the Red Cross Knight V 

How Beowulf Delivered Heorot (Fiend) V 

Rustem (Deevs) V 

Months, see also Autumn, Spring, Summer, Winter 

The Twelve Months Ill 

The Month of March Ill 

March Ill 

Song On a May Morning Ill 

April Ill 

Moon 

Moon, So Round and Yellow . ... ^ I 

A Daring Prince I 

What the Moon Saw I 

What Else the Moon Saw I 

Old Shellover I 

Boy Who Wanted The Impossible I 

Hiawatha’s Childhood II 

Judging By Appearances II 

Moon’s the North Wind’s Cooky II 

Daniel O’Rourke Ill 

The Moon-Maiden Ill 

Adventures of Yehl Ill 

Assembling of the Fays Ill 

Mr. Moon Ill 

The Three Sillies IV 

Mosquito, see Insects 
Moth, see Insects 
Mountains 

Little Engine That Could I 

Barry, a Dog of the Alps II: * 87 II 

Heidi in the Alpine Pasture II 

Moon-Maiden (Fujiyama) . Ill 

The Man Who Loved Hai Quai (Mt. Tacoma) Ill 

How the Waterfall Came to the Thirsting Mountains 

(Carpathians) Ill 

Luck Boy of Toy Valley (Tyrolean Alps) Ill 

Roland (Pyrenees) V 

William Tell (Swiss Alps) V 

White Aster V 

Exile of Rama V 

Mouse, see Animals 
Music 

Duty That Was Not Paid (Mozart) Ill 

Music-Loving Bears Ill 

Dance of the Forest People Ill 

Muskrat, see Animals 


64 

327 

376 


326 

423 

412 
12 

413 
436 

145 

348 

353 

31 
394 

68 

100 

69 

101 

150 

388 

431 

175 

411 

74 

179 

220 

11 

32 
80 


193 
f 88 
277 
179 
216 

376 

106 

300 

290 

373 

383 


112 

123 

126 


293 


MY BOOK HOUS 


Myths 

GREEK 

Clytie 


NORSE 


r S 

E 

II: 

123 

III: 

274 

III: 

268 

IV: 

412 

IV: 

423 

IV: 

436 

IV: 

444 


Nature, Beauties Of, see Forests, Meadows, Plains, Prairies, Desert, 
Sea, Mountains, Lakes, Brooks, Rivers, Cataracts, Sun, 
Sunrise, Sunset, Moon, Stars, Twilight, Night, Sky, 
Clouds, Rain, Rainbow, Wind, Thunder, Frost, Snow, Fog, 
Autumn, Winter, Spring, Summer, Months, Flowers, 
Trees, Fruit, Fishes, Fowls, Birds, Reptiles, Insects, Cob- 
webs, Animals, Solitude 


Night 


Winter Neighbors . . , 

. . . V: 

255 

How Night Came . . . 

. . . Ill: 

211 

Twilight 

. . . Ill: 

215 


Opossum, see Animals 
Oribi, see Animals 
Ostrich, see Birds 
Owl, see Birds 
Ox, see Animals 
Oyster, see Fish 
Panther, see Animals 
Pantomime 

Columbine and Her Playfellows of the Italian Pantomime 
Parrot, see Birds 
Partridge, see Birds 

Patriotic Stories, see Patriotism under Index According to Ethical 
Theme 



III: 


354 


Peacock, see Birds 


Peddlers 

If I’d As Much Money I: 42 

Buttons a Farthing a Pair I: 51 

The Peddler’s Caravan II : 448 

The Ragged Pedlar Ill: 252 

The Peddler’s Song Ill: 256 

Perch) see Fish 


Pheasant, see Birds 
Pig, see Animals 
Pike, see Fish 
Plains, see also Prairies 

The Plains’ Call IV: 182 

Pony, see Animals 
Porcupine, see Animals 
Porpoise, see Fish 

Prairie, see also Plains and Meadows 


Night Ride in a Prairie Schooner IV: 183 

Proverbs 

Birds of a Feather 1 : 47 

If Wishes Were Horses I: 50 


294 


THE LATCH KEY 

Punch And Judy Shows 

Bikku Matti II : 394 

Little Nell and Mrs. Jarley Ill: 130 

Renowned Adventures of Punch and Judy Ill: 438 

Quagga, see Animals A 

Rabbit, see Animals \i 

Raccoon, see Animals L 

Rain wjll 

Rain, rain go away I: 40 ft JJL 

Who Likes the Rain? I: 109 If ( >& 

Rain in Summer II : 203 y \Jjr y 


Rainbow 

The Girl and the Hare I: 241 

Bow That Bridges Heaven I: 298 

Noah’s Ark I: 295 

Hiawatha’s Childhood II: 431 

Hercules IV: 423 

Kalevala V: 359 

Rat, see Animals 

Realistic Stories, (stories that might have been true) See also True 
Stories 

What the Moon Saw 1 : 69 

What Else the Moon Saw I: 101 

Mrs. Tabby Gray I: 180 

Noah’s Ark I: 295 

How the Home Was Built I: 285 

Oeyvind and Marit I: 358 

Happy Day in the City 1 : 396 

Doll Under the Briar Rosebush 1 : 425 

Beyond the Toll-Gate II: 434 

Heidi in the Alpine Pasture II: 277 

Piccola II: 303 

Ikwa and Annowee II: 388 

Bikku Matti _ II: 394 

Christening the Baby In Russia II: 218 

The Story of a Beaver Ill: 117 

Where Sarah Jane’s Doll Went Ill: 86 

A Credit to the School Ill: 98 

Luck Boy of Toy Valley Ill: 106 

Little Nell and Mrs. Jarley 's Wax Works Ill: 130 

David Copperfield and Little Em’ly I V : 98 

The Booms IV: 124 

The Sugar Camp IV : 143 

Night Ride in a Prairie Schooner . IV: 183 

Maggie Tulliver Goes To Live With the Gypsies IV: 213 

The Nuremberg Stove IV: 284 

The Secret Door IV: 315 

Robin Hood V: 49 

Melting Pot V: 173 

Coaly Bay * . V: 218 

Richard Feverel and the Hayrick V: 228 

Mr. Hampden’s Shipwreck V: 264 

Wolfert Webber V: 107 

TheCid V: 316 

Beaumains V: 327 

Frithjof V : 338 

White Aster V: 373 


295 


MY BOOK HOUS 

Reindeer, see Animals 

Repetitive Stories, see also Cumulative Stories 

Little Red Hen and the Grain of Wheat I : 

The “Wake Up” Story I: 

The Cat and the Mouse I: 

The Little Gray Pony I: 

The Gingerbread Boy I: 

Wee, Wee Mannie and the Big, Big Coo I: 

Little Half Chick I: 

Reptiles 

ALLIGATOR 

Amman Ill: 

EEL 

Right Time to Laugh II: 

FROG 

The Frog and the Ox I : 

Over in the Meadow I : 

Right Time to Laugh II : 

Mr. Moon Ill: 

Melilot Ill: 

LIZARD 

Over in the Meadow I : 

The Lost Spear Ill: 

NEWT 

Lullaby for Titania Ill: 

SNAKE 

Lullaby for Titania Ill : 

TOAD 

Thumbelisa II : 

Toads and Diamonds II:* 353 II: 

TURTLE 

Clytie II : 

The Turtle Who Could Not Stop Talking I: 

Hare and Tortoise I : 

Mock Turtle’s Song IV : 

WORM 

Old Shellover I : 

Lullaby for Titania Ill: 

Sandpiper, see Birds 
Sea, see also Boats 

The Two Crabs I : 

Little Blue Apron I: *418 I: 

The Merchant I: * 39 I: 

A Sea Song from the Shore I : * 40 I : 

The Fisherman and His Wife II: 

Down on the Shore II : 

Clytie II: 

White Horses . Ill: 

The Sea Shell Ill: 

Why the Sea is Salt Ill: 

A Tropical Morning at Sea Ill: 

The Fisherman Who Caught the Sun Ill : 

The Sandpiper IV: 

David Copperfield and Little Em’ly IV: 

The Merman IV: 


E 


60 
71 
t 78 
92 
121 
235 
304 


197 

112 

178 

64 

112 

32 

242 

64 

228 

25 

25 

414 

f323 

123 

222 

299 

150 

150 

25 


113 

f424 

f324 

|325 


191 


122 

123 

158 
164 

159 
209 
206 
115 

98 

96 


296 


the latch key 


Sea — Continued 

Little Gulliver 

Perseus 

Young Midshipman David Farragut 

Alexander Selkirk IV : 328 

A Song of Drake’s Men .... IV : 11 

A Song at Sea V: 279 

Mr. Hampden’s Shipwreck ... V: 264 

Sea-gull, see Birds 
Sea-horse, see Fish 

Seasons, see Months, Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter 
Sheep, see Animals 
Ships, see Boats 
Skunk, see Animals 

Sky, see also Clouds, Sun, Moon, Stars, Thunder, etc. 


Snail, . 
Snake, 
Snow 

Friends 

see Fish 
see Reptiles 

II: *160 

II: 

fl64 


Snow 

. I: *165 

I: 

tl62 


The Little Snow Maiden 

.11: *293 

II: 

f230 


Marjorie’s Almanac . . 


II: 

260 


The Twelve Months 
Snow Bound . . . 


Snow-bunting, see Birds 

Solitude 

Sparrow, see Birds 
Spider, see Insects 
Spring, see also Months 

Spring 

Marjorie’s Almanac 

Sleeping Beauty 

The Stealing of Iduna 

How the Goddess of Spring Came to Scoring 
Springbok, see Animals 
Squirrels, see Animals 
Star 

The Star _ 

Legend of the Water Lily 

Babe of Bethlehem 

Star-fish, see Fish 
Starling, see Birds 
Stork, see Birds 
Sturgeon, see Fish 
Summer, see also Months 

Marjorie’s Almanac 

Sun 

The Wind and the Sun 

The Brooklet’s Story 

The Fisherman Who Caught the Sun . . . 

A Tropical Morning at Sea 

The Adventures of Yehl 

Phaeton 

Sunrise 

Rhodopis 

A Day 


IV: 

85 

IV: 

412 

IV: 

354 



Ill: 145 

V: 253 


IV: 

353 

I: 

302 

II: 

260 

III: 

26 

IV: 

444 

IV: 

448 


. . . . I: 374 
II: *118 II: fl 17 
. . . . II: 300 


II: 

260 

I 

119 

II 

t 52 

III 

206 

III 

209 

III 

220 

III 

268 

III: 

: 262 

III: 

: 267 


297 


MY BOOK 


HOUSE 


Sunset 

Heidi II: 

A Day Ill: 

Sunshine 

Brook Song II: * 52 II: 

Friends II: *160 II: 

October’s Party II : 

Swallow, see Birds 
Swan, see Birds 
Thanksgiving 

Feast of Tabernacles II: 

We Thank Thee II: 

Thrush, see Birds 
Thunder 

Adventures of Yehl Ill: 

Thor’s Journey to Jotun-heim IV: 

Tiger, see Animals 

Toad, see Reptiles 

Toys, see also Candy and Dolls 

Smiling Girls, Rosy Boys I : 

What They Say I: * 91 I: 

Little Engine That Could I : 

Brownies in the Toy Shop II : 

Luck Boy of Toy Valley Ill: 

Trees, see also Forests 

Friends II: *160 II: 

Trees V : 

APPLE TREES 

Old Johnny Appleseed II: *323 II: 

Planting of the Apple Tree II: *328 II: 

BAMBOO 

The Exile of Rama V: 


BIRCH 

The Birches . II: 

Christening the Baby in Russia II: 

Marjorie’s Almanac II: 

Hansel and Grethel Ill : 

ELM 

Marjorie’s Almanac II : 

LARCH 

Marjorie’s Almanac II: 

MANGO 

How the Brazilian Beetles Got Their Gorgeous Coats ... II : 
Exile of Rama V : 

PALM 

Foolish, Timid, Little Hare II: 

ROYAL PALM 

How the Brazilian Beetles Got Their Gorgeous Coats ... II : 

DATE PALM 

Hassan, the Arab, and His Horse II: 

CABBAGE PALM 

Alexander Selkirk IV : 

PT? A I? TT? T7T7 

Shaking of the Pear-Tree Ill: 

PEEPUL 

Exile of Rama V : 


277 

267 

t 57 
1 164 
t57 


257 

259 


220 

436 


19 
t 87 
193 
58 
106 

1 164 
263 

f352 

t357 

383 

229 

218 

260 

45 

260 

260 

128 

383 

69 

128 

308 

328 

142 

383 


298 


THE LATCH KEY 


PINES 

Hiawatha's Childhood II: 431 

Christening the Baby In Russia II: 218 

Hansel and Grethel Ill : 45 


SINGING TREE, THE 

The Golden Bird 


IV: 57 


WILLOW 

Marjorie's Almanac II: 

Trolls, see Fairy Tales 
Tropical Jungle 

Memoirs of a White Elephant I V : 

Alexander Selkirk IV : 

Exile of Rama V : 

Trout, see Fish 


True Stories, see also Realistic Stories, Hero and Heroine Stories 


260 


152 

328 

383 


The Babe Moses I: *420 I 

Barry, a Dog of the Alps II: * 88 II 

Jamie Watt and His Grandmother's Tea Kettle. . .II: *147 II 

Old Johnny Appleseed II: *323 II 

The Feast of Tabernacles II 

Betsy Ross and the First American Flag II: *293 II 

Two Little Birds and a Great Man II: *235 II 

The Babe of Bethlehem II 

Hassan, the Arab, and His Horse II 

The Duty That Was Not Paid (Mozart) Ill 

General Tom Thumb IV 

Story of a Spider IV 

The Boy of Cadore (Titian) IV 

The Boyhood of Robert Fulton IV 

Winter Neighbors V 


f419 
t 88 
fl51 
f352 
257 
f230 
f298 
300 
308 
112 
163 
189 
276 
396 
255 


Turkey, see Fowls 
Turtle, see Reptiles 
Twilight 

Twilight 

Adventures of Yehl 

Washington, George 

Betsy Ross, and the First American Flag II: 
Water Buffalo, see Animals 
Waterfall, see Cataract 
Wax Works 

Little Nell and Mrs. Jarley’s Wax Works . 
Whale, see Fish 
White Eagle, see Birds 



Wind 

Blow, Wind, Blow I 

My Lady Wind I 

Little Wind I 

March Winds I 

The Wind and the Sun I 

Who Has Seen the Wind? I 

Little Half-Chick I 

Come Little Leaves I 

Shingebiss I 

Friends II: *160 II 

Little Diamond and the North Wind Ill 


39 

46 

59 

51 

119 

120 
304 

f326 
339 
1 164 
422 


299 


M Y 


BOOK HOUSE 



INTRODUCTION TO INDEX ACCORDING TO 
ETHICAL THEME 

I am weary of seeing this subject of education always treated 
as if “education” only meant teaching children to write or to cipher 
or to repeat the catechism . Real education , the education which 
alone should be compulsory means nothing of the kind . It means 
teaching children to be clean , active , honest and useful . — John Ruskin . 

Real education certainly is a spiritual as well as an intellec- 
tual process. It certainly does mean guiding children to see 
clearly the distinction between good and evil, right and wrong, 
moving them deeply with sympathy for the good and repugnance 
for the evil, and inspiring them to act in accordance with these 
perceptions. This is rarely accomplished by preaching at chil- 
dren or moralizing to them. But all good stories and books 
have recorded naturally and most often unconsciously the. re- 
action of the author or story-teller to various human qualities 
and types of human disposition, and through his art, indeed by 
his very unconsciousness of what he is accomplishing, the story- 
teller makes the child feel deeply just what he has felt. If the 
author has felt affectation, artificiality, boastfulness, conceit, as 
ridiculous qualities, he makes them ridiculous; if he has felt 
cold self-righteousness, cowardice, dishonesty, hypocrisy, treach- 
ery as ugly qualities, he has made them ugly, and the child 
vigorously separates himself from them and refuses them as he 
reads; if he has felt courage, compassion, loyalty, truth, devo- 
tion, perseverance, purpose as splendid qualities, he has made 

300 


THE LATCH 


KEY 


them splendid and the child has felt them to be splendid and 
desired to possess them in every fibre of his being. It is not 
that such an author tells the child these qualities are thus and so, 
whereby he could do no more than make a pin prick of an im- 
pression on his intellect; he moves him to feel that they are 
so in the very depths of his spirit wherein he truly lives and 


moves and has his 
a lasting impres- 
It is thus that 
books and stories 
ideals. But besides 
of their standards 
a specific use which 
or teacher may 
of the stories. If 
unkind and dis- 
him such a story 
monds without any 
ever, is often the 
edy for the trouble. 


A man is not ed- 
ucated because he buys 
a book; he is not ed- 
ucated because he reads 
a book , though it should 
be the very best book 
that ever was written y 
and should enumerate 
and unfold all the law 
of God . He only is 
educated who practices 
according to the laws of 
God. — Horace Mann . 


being, and so leaves 
sion upon him 
truly worth-while 
mould children’s 
this general shaping 
there is an addition 
the father, mother 
occasionally make 
a child has been 
courteous, to read 
as Toads and Dia- 
comment whatso- 
most effective rem- 
it he has been un- 


loving, the beautiful story of the love of little Snow White and Rose 
Red for one another may do more for him than worlds of preaching. 

And so, quite without spoiling the stories, or detracting at 
all from their right purpose to amuse and entertain, one may 
often make this particular use of them with remarkably good 
results. It is to meet this particular need in the most intelligent 
way and in answer to many requests that the following Index 
According to Ethical Theme has been prepared. 


To live for common ends is to be common, 

The highest faith makes still the highest man, 

For we grow like the things that we believe, 

And rise or sink as we aim high or low. — Robert Browning. 


301 



MY BOOK HOUSE 



INDEX ACCORDING 

* First Edition, f Second Edition 


Absent-Mindedness 

The Milk Maid and Her Pail I: 146 

Blunder II: 314 

Accuracy. See also Inaccuracy 

Robin Hood V : 49 

William Tell V: 290 

Activity. See also Inactivity; Laziness; Industry 

The Strong Boy Ill: 165 

Affectation 

The Donkey and the Lap-Dog 1 : 1 1 1 

The Swineherd IV: 270 

Dear Sensibility IV: 275 


Affection, See Love; Family Affection 
Alertness, See Awakeness; Blundering 
Ambition 
( Good ) 


The Boy of Cadore IV: 276 

( Overweening ) 

The Fisherman and His Wife II: 191 

The Three Wishes Ill : 1 54 

Anger, See Passion; Rage; Quarrelsomeness; Temper 
Anticipation 

The Milkmaid and Her Pail I: 146 

Anticipation of Evil 

The Foolish, Timid, Little Hare II: 69 

The Sleeping Beauty Ill: 26 

The Wise Men of Gotham Ill: 82 

Little-Man-As-Big-As-Your-Thumb (Tsar Wisehead) . . . . W: 26 

The Three Sillies IV: 80 

Anxiety, See Anticipation of Evil 

Arrogance, See Pride; Boastfulness 

Artificiality. See also Affectation and Sentimentality 

The Swineherd IV: 270 

Avarice, See Miserliness; Stinginess; Greed 
Awareness 

The Twelve Dancing Princesses II: 176 

Bigness of Soul 

Cuchulain V: 396 

Blundering 

Blunder (not using eyes) II: 314 



302 




TO ETHICAL THEME 


i 

i 

i 

ii 

ii 

in 

hi 

v 


Blustering. See also Boastfulness 

The Wind and the Sun I 

Una and the Red Cross Knight {Orgoglio) V 

Boastfulness 

Belling the Cat 

The Wind and the Sun 

The Hare and the Tortoise .... 

The Firefly and the Apes .... 

How the Brazilian Beetles Got Their Gorgeous Coats 
David and Goliath {Goliath) 

Phaeton 

Beaumains, the Kitchen Knight {enemies of Beaumains) 

Bravery. See Courage 
Carelessness 

The Three Little Kittens I : 

Charity. See also Compassion; Kindness; Love 

Una and the Red Cross Knight ( Charissa ) V: 

Cleanliness. See Neatness 
Coldness of Heart 

The Snow Queen {Cold Intellectually, Ill: 

Maggie Tulliver Goes to Live With the Gypsies {Tom) . . . .IV: 

Compassion. See also Kindness to Animals 

Snow White and Rose Red II : 

The Coming of the King II: 

Dame Wiggins of Lee II: 

Barry, a Dog of the Alps II: 87* II: 

The Selfish Giant II: 

Two Little Birds and a Great Man II: 235* II: 

Thumbelisa II: 

Prince Fairyfoot Ill: 

Little Nell and Mrs. Jarley’s Wax Works Ill: 

The Two Bad Bargains Ill : 

Melilot Ill: 

Little Gulliver IV: 

Where Love Is, There God Is Also IV: 

Princess Nelly {Chief Corn-Planter) IV: 

The Two Pilgrims V: 

Complaint. See Grumbling 
Comradeship. See also Friendship 

The Sheep and the Pig That Made a Home I : 


119 

12 

84 

119 

299 

82 

128 

257 

268 

327 


15 

12 


303 

213 

f 35 
74 
19 
t 88 
246 
f298 
414 
12 
130 
369 
242 
85 
194 
363 
152 


279 


303 




HOUSE 




MY BOOK 


Comradeship continued 

Good Comrades of the Flying Ship 

Little Gulliver 

Cuchulain, the Irish Hound 

Conceit. See also Pride and Vanity 

The Frog and the Ox 

Cinderella {Step Sisters ) 

The Acorn and the Pumpkin 

Phaeton 

Rustem, a Hero of Persia ( Kaikous ) 

Confidence. See also Faith 

The Little Engine That Could 

Piccola 

Amman 

David and Goliath 

Daniel In the Lions’ Den 

Rustem 

Consecration. See Devotion and Purpose 
Conscience Awakened 

Richard Feverel . 

Contemplation. See also Thoughtfulness 

Una and the Red Cross Knight {Mount of Contemplation) 
Contrariness 

The Wee, Wee Mannie and the Big, Big Coo . 
Co-operation 

The Wake-up Story 

The Sheep and the Pig That Made a Home . . . . 

How the Home Was Built 

Good Comrades of the Flying Ship 

Courage. See also Fearlessness 

Shingebiss 

The Firefly and the Apes 

Jack and the Beanstalk 

The Story of Christopher Columbus 

The Story of Tom Thumb 

The Boy Hero of Harlem 

Ikwa and Annowee 

The Princess on the Glass Hill 

Amman 

East o’ the Sun and West o’ the Moon 

Sleeping Beauty 

The Strong Boy 

The Snow Queen 

The Six Swans 

David and Goliath 

The Fisherman Who Caught the Sun 

The Secret Door 

Young Midshipman David Farragut 

George Rogers Clark 

Perseus 

Hercules 

Little Man as Big as Your Thumb 

Robert Bruce 

William Tell 

Roland 

Joan of Arc 

The Cid 

Beaumains, the Kitchen Knight . 



. Ill: 
. IV: 
. V: 

. I: 
. II: 
. Ill: 
. Ill: 
V: 

. I: 
. II: 
. Ill: 

. Ill: 

. IV: 
V: 


V: 


, . V: 

. I: 

. . I: 

. I: 
, . I: 

, . Ill: 

1:340* I: 

. II: 
, . II: 

. II: 
. II: 
. II: 
. II: 
. Ill: 
. Ill: 
. Ill: 
. Ill: 
. Ill: 
. Ill: 
. Ill: 
. Ill: 
. Ill: 
. IV: 
. IV: 
. IV: 
. IV: 
. IV: 
. IV: 
. V: 

V: 
. V: 

V: 
. V: 
. V: 


184 

85 

396 

178 

165 

290 

268 

436 

193 

303 

197 

257 

408 

436 


228 

12 

235 

71 

279 

285 

184 

f339 

82 

371 

204 

262 

184 

388 

52 

197 

399 

26 

165 

303 

363 

257 

206 

315 
354 
390 
412 
423 

26 

281 

290 

300 

306 

316 
327 


304 


THE LATCH 


IV: 

: 204 

IV 

57 

IV 

85 

V 

306 

I 

42 

II 

t323 

III 

145 

III 

348 

IV 

40 

IV 

57 

V 

326 

V 

327 

I 

157 

II 

191 

III 

154 

III 

216 

III 

274 

III 

159 


Courage continued 

Beowulf 

Rustem 

Courage (Moral) 

Melilot 

Amman 

Knights of the Silver Shield 
The Talking Bird . 

Little Gulliver 

Joan of Arc .... 

Courtesy, Courtliness 

As I Was Going Up Pippin Hill 
Toads and Diamonds 
The Twelve Months 
The Month of March 
The Magic Horse . 

The Talking Bird . 

A Perfect Knight . 

Beaumains, the Kitchen Knight 
Covetousness 

The Dog In the Manger 
The Fisherman and His Wife 
The Three Wishes . 

The Man Who Loved Hai Quai 
The Golden Touch 
Why the Sea Is Salt 
Cowardice. See also Timidity; Fear 
The Cid ( The Infantes ) . 

Joan of Arc ( The Dauphin ) . 

Hercules ( Eurystheus ) 

Criticism 

The Two Crabs 
The Story of a Caterpillar 
Battle of the Firefly and the Apes 
The Fairy Who Judged Her Neighbors 
Maggie Tulliver Goes to Live with the Gypsies (Tom) 
Clocks of Rondaine (Everybody Wrong But Me) 
Crowding 

How the Finch Got Her Colors 

Cruelty 

The Tongue-cut Sparrow 

Prince Cherry 

The Cid (The Infantes) 

Crying Uselessly. See Grieving Uselessly 
Cunning 

Kalevala, Land of Heroes ( Wisdom Turned to Cunning) 
Curiosity 

East o’ the Sun and West o’ the Moon 

The Sleeping Beauty 

Deceit 

The Ass in the Lion’s Skin 

The Jay and the Peacocks 

The Boy Who Cried Wolf 

Thor’s Journey to Jotun-heim (The Giants) 

The Stealing of Iduna 

Una and the Red Cross Knight (Archimago and Duessa) 
Decision. See also Indecision 

Young Midshipman David Farragut .... 


KEY 


V: 413 
V: 436 

III: 242 
III: 197 



. . V: 316 

. V: 306 

. IV: 423 

I: 113 
II: 41* II: t 46 

. II: 82 

. II: 358 

. IV: 213 

. IV: 251 

. . II: 22 

. II: 63 

. Ill: 326 

. . V: 316 


. V: 359 

. Ill: 399 
. Ill: 26 

I: 245 
I: 160 
I: 372 
. IV: 436 
. IV: 444 
. V: 12 

. IV: 534 


305 


HOUSE 


MY BOOK 

Desertion of a Trust 

Tudur ap Einion Ill: 395 

Despair 

Una and the Red Cross Knight V: 12 

Devotion 

East o' the Sun and West o’ the Moon Ill : 399 

Melilot Ill: 242 

The Snow Queen Ill: 303 

The Six Swans Ill: 363 

The Talking Bird IV: 57 

The Magic Horse IV: 40 

Perseus IV: 412 

Hiawatha’s Fasting IV: 381 

The Story of Alfred V : 80 

Joan of Arc V: 306 

Beaumains, the Kitchen Knight V: 327 

White Aster V: 373 

Discontent. See also Grumbling 

Peter Rabbit Decides to Change His Name I: 375 

The Boy Who Wanted the Impossible I: 388 

The Little Rabbit Who Wanted Red Wings I: 151 

The Fisherman and His Wife II: 191 

The Three Wishes Ill: 154 

The Ragged Pedlar Ill: 252 

Discouragement. See also Despair 

Thor’s Journey to Jotun-heim IV: 436 

Discourtesy. See Courtesy 

Dishonesty. See also Falsehood; Honesty; Truthfulness 

Teeny Tiny 1 : 336 

The Marvelous Pot Ill: 69 

Disobedience. See also Obedience 

The Tale of Peter Rabbit . I: 186 

Nutcracker and Sugardolly II: 91 

The Pony Engine and the Pacific Express II : 342 

Where Sarah Jane’s Doll Went Ill: 86 

The Golden Bird Ill: 292 

Distrust 

Kalevala (In Friendship) V: 359 

Thor’s Journey to Jotun-Heim (Of One's Ability) IV: 436 

Amman (The Captain) Ill: 197 

Egotism. See also Selfishness 

“It” I: 179 

Endurance. See also Hardihood 

Hercules IV: 423 

Envy 

The Three Wishes Ill: 154 

The Cid (Enemies of the Cid) V:316 

The Exile of Rama (Kaikeyi) V : 383 

Evil to Him Who Evil Thinks 

The Ogre Th^t Played Jackstraws Ill: 174 

Exercising Strength 

The Strong Boy Ill: 165 

Eyes Not Used 

Blunder II: 314 

Faith. See also Confidence 
(That Nothing is Impossible) 

The Little Engine That Could I: 193 


306 


THE LATCH KEY 

Faith continued 

Boyhood of Robert Fulton 

{In God) See Religious Feeling 
Faithfulness. See also Devotion and Loyalty 
Una and the Red Cross Knight {Una) 

{To Duty) 

Knights of the Silver Shield 

Faithlessness. See also Treachery 

Gigi and the Magic Ring {Maliarda) .... 

Una and the Red Cross Knight {Red Cross Knight) 

{To Duty) 

Tudur ap Einion 

Milkmaid and Her Pail 

Falsehood. See Dishonesty; Deceit; Treachery 

Una and the Red Cross Knight {Archimago and Duessa) 

Joseph and His Brethren {Joseph's Brethren) 

False Show 

Ass in the Lion's Skin .... 

Jay and the Peacocks .... 

False Standards. See Standards, False 
Family Affection. See also Love for Father, 

How the Home Was Built . 

The Pony Engine and the Pacific Express 
East o’ the Sun and West o’ the Moon 

The Talking Bird 

The Nuremberg Stove .... 

Princess Nelly 

The Cid and His Daughters 
The Exile of Rama .... 

Fashion. Foolish Aping of 

Prince Fairyfoot 

The Swineherd 

Fearlessness. See also Courage 
Shingebiss .... 

What Else the Moon Saw 
Snow White and Rose Red . 

Fear of Public Opinion 

The Emperor's New Clothes 
Foolishness 


IV: 26 


.1: 340* I: 
I: 


The Foolish, Timid, Little Hare 

. 

II: 

69 

The Wise Men of Gotham 

# # 

III: 

82 

The Three Sillies .... 

. 

IV: 

80 


3 ower 


Force, Less Desirable Than Wisdom. See also Intelligence 
Little- M an- As-Big- As- Y our-Thumb . 

{Less Desirable Than Love) See also Love is 
The Wind and the Sun .... 

Coaly-Bay 

Forgetfulness 
{Of Duty) 

The Milkmaid and Her Pail . 

Tudur ap Einion 

Forgiveness 

Aruman 

Joseph and His Brethren 

The Melting Pot 

Fortitude. See Hardihood 
Fortune. See Luck 


Sister, Brother, etc. 


. IV: 

396 

. V: 

12 

. IV: 

204 

. Ill: 

337 

. V: 

12 

. Ill: 

395 

. I: 

146 

. V: 

12 

. V: 

294 

. I: 

245 

. I: 

160 

. I: 

285 



119 

218 


I: 146 
III: 395 


III: 197 
V: 294 
V: 173 


307 


MY BOOK HOUSE 

Fortune Hunting 

( Visionary Schemes vs. Common Sense) 

Wolfert Webber V: 107 

Freedom, Love of 

Coaly-Bay V:218 

Stanzas on Freedom V: 216 

Bannockburn V: 289 

Friendship 
(Boy and Girl ) 

Oeyvind and Marit 1:358 

David Copperfield and Little Em’ly IV : 98 

Frithjof (Frithjof and Ingeborg) V: 338 

(Men) 

Good Comrades of the Flying Ship Ill: 184 

Frithiof (Bele and Thorsten) V: 338 

(Boys) 

Cuchulain V: 396 

Richard Feverel V: 228 

(Child and Elders) 

Beyond the Toll-gate II : 434 

Garrulousness 

The Turtle Who Could Not Stop Talking I: 222 

(Ability to Hold One's Tongue ) 

The Six Swans Ill : 363 

Prince Fairyfoot Ill: 12 

Generosity. See also Stinginess and Miserliness 

The Duty That Was Not Paid Ill: 112 

Maggie Tulliver Goes to Live With the Gypsies (Maggie) . . .IV: 213 

The Cid V: 316 

Gentleness 

The Wind and the Sun 1:119 

Cinderella II: 165 

Toads and Diamonds II: 353* II: f^23 

The Twelve Months Ill: 145 

Pigling and Her Proud Sister Ill: 191 

Yehl and the Beaming Maiden, Adventures of Ill: 220 

Gluttony 

Charley Nag I: 47 

Little Jack Horner 1:27 

Nutcracker and Sugardolly II: 91 

Hansel and Grethel Ill : 45 

Prince Harweda Ill : 34 

Gratitude 

The Shoemaker and the Elves 1 : 346 

The Lion and the Mouse I: 148 

Psalm of Praise 1:419* I: f423 

Feast of Tabernacles 11:257 

We Thank Thee II: 259 

Two Bad Bargains Ill : 369 

The Lost Spear Ill: 228 

Greed 

Dog in the Manger I: 157 

The Marvelous Pot Ill : 69 

Why The Sea Is Salt Ill: 159 

The Golden Touch Ill: 274 

The Man Who Loved Hai Quai 111:216 

Grieving Uselessly 

Johnny and the Three Goats I: f 80 


308 


the latch key 

Grieving Uselessly continued 

The Snow-Maiden II: 393* II: f230 

The Girl Who Used Her Wits 11:271 

Grumbling 

The Cock, the Mouse and the Little Red Hen . . . . . . I: 212 

I Wouldn’t Be a Growler I: 159 

The Ragged Pedlar Ill : 252 

David Copperfield and Little Em'ly {Mrs. Cummidge) . . . . IV : 98 

The Steamboat and the Locomotive IV: 117 

Hardihood 

George Rogers Clark IV: 390 

Alexander Selkirk IV: 328 

Young Midshipman David Farragut IV: 354 

Mr. Hampden’s Shipwreck V: 264 

Harshness 

The Wind and the Sun . . . I: 119 

Helpfulness. See Co-operation 
Honor 

A Credit to the School 

TheCid V: 316 

Beaumains, the Kitchen Knight V: 327 

A Perfect Knight V:326 

Honesty. See also Truthfulness and Dishonesty 

The Honest Woodman II: 78 

A Credit to the School Ill : 98 

Thor’s Journey to Jotun-heim IV: 436 

Richard Feverel and the Hay-rick . V:228 

Hope 

The Little Engine That Could I: 193 

Una and the Red Cross Knight ( Speranza ) V: 12 

Hospitality 

The Coming of the King II: 74 

Little Nell and Mrs. Jarley’s Wax Works {Mrs. Jarley) . . .Ill: 130 

The Magic Horse IV: 40 

Humility. See also Modesty 

Toads and Diamonds II: 353* II : f-323 

Cinderella II: 165 

The Snow Queen ( Gerda ) Ill : 303 

David and Goliath {David) Ill: 257 

Melilot Ill: 242 

Gideon IV: 402 

Daniel IV: 408 

Hercules IV : 423 

Beaumains, the Kitchen Knight V: 327 

The Exile of Rama {Rama ) . V : 383 

Humor. See Humorous stories under Special Subjects Index 
Hypocrisy 

Una and the Red Cross Knight {A rchimago) . . , . . .V: 12 

Ideals. See also Standards, True 

A Perfect Knight V:326 

Beaumains, the Kitchen Knight V: 327 

Idleness 

Elsa and the Ten Elves Ii: 251 

Jack and the Beanstalk . . . .* II: 371 

The Owl’s Answer to Tommy .II: 25 

The Brooklet’s Story II: 47* II: f 52 

Li’l’ Hannibal II: 138 

Nutcracker and Sugardolly . . . . . . . . . .II: 91 


309 


MY BOOK HOUSE 


Ignorance 

The Sleeping Beauty Ill : 26 

Illusions 
(Of Fear) 

Thor’s Journey to Jotun-heim IV: 436 

The Talking Bird IV: 57 

(Of Pleasure) 

Tudur ap Einion Ill : 395 

Rustem (Land of the Deevs) V : 436 

Imaginativeness 

Clouds I: 106 

Clouds and Waves I: 107 

Child’s Play II: 145* II: fl49 

The Merchant II: 39* I: f324 

Impatience. See also Patience 

Prince Cherry Ill: 326 

Impulsiveness 

Maggie Tulliver Goes to Live with the Gypsies IV: 213 

Inaccuracy 

The Clocks of Rondaine IV: 251 

Inactivity. See also Activity; Industry; Laziness 

The Brooklet’s Story II: 47* II: f 52 

The Strong Boy Ill: 165 

Indecision. See also Decision 

A Robin and a Robin’s Son . . 1 : 24 

Indolence. See also Laziness ; Inactivity, etc. 

Joan of Arc (The Dauphin) V: 306 

Industry 



I: 87 


The Cock’s On the Housetop 

My Maid Mary 

Is Master Smith Within? .... 

Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush 
The Little Red Hen and the Grain of Wheat 

The Farmer’s Boy 

The Cock, the Mouse and the Little Red Hen 
The Sheep and the Pig That Built a Home 
Snow White and Rose Red .... 

How Doth the Little Busy Bee . 

Dick Whittington . . . . 

The Luck Boy of Toy Valley 

The Story of a Beaver 

The Story of Alfred 

Cuchulain (The Smiths) 

Ingratitude 

Joan of Arc (The Dauphin) 

Intellectuality 

The Snow Queen (Cold) 

Intelligence. (Superior to Physical Strength.) See also Thoughtfulness; 
ness; Investigation; Wisdom. 

Battle of the Firefly and the Apes 

Jack and the Beanstalk 

The Golden Bird 

Little-Man- As-Big-As-Your-Thumb 

Adventures of Perseus 

Robert Bruce 

Inventiveness 

Jamie Watt and His Grandmother’s Tea Kettle 


I: 
I: 
I: 
I: 
I: 
* I: 
I: 
I: 
II: 
II: 
II: 
III: 
III: 
V: 
V: 


32 

35 

42 

43 
60 

t 90 
212 
279 
f 35 
137 
329 
106 
117 
80 
396 


V: 306 


III: 303 
Inventive- 


. . II: 

82 

. . . 11 : 

371 

. . Ill: 

292 

. . . IV: 

26 

. . . IV: 

412 

, . . V: 

281 

. II: 147* II: 

fl51 

. . . IV: 

396 


3io 


THE LATCH KEY 


Inventiveness continued 

The Story of King Alfred 

Investigativeness 

Boots and His Brothers 

Jamie Watt and His Grandmother’s Tea Kettle 
Jealousy. See also Envy 

The Twin Lambs 

Cinderella 

Toads and Diamonds 

Pigling 

Amman 

The Six Swans 

The Twelve Months 

Joseph and His Brethren 

Joking That Is Unkind 

The Fox and the Stork 

The Boy Who Cried Wolf 

Where Sarah Jane’s Doll Went .... 
A Credit to the School 


Joy 

The World 
Jog On ... 

I’m Glad the Sky . 

Merry Are the Bells 
Sing, Little Bird 
Wee Robin’s Christmas Song 
A Laughing Song . 

Spring .... 

A Psalm of Praise 
The Wonderful World . 

Nurse’s Song . 

Judging 

{By A ppearances) 

The Fairy That Judged Her Neighbors 
How the Brazilian Beetles Got Their Gorgeous Coats 
Judging By Appearances 
Prince Fairyfoot 
The Bird of Paradise 
{Contrary to Appearances) 

The Coming of the King 
Through a Mouse Hole . 

Melilot .... 

Justice 

The Ass in the Lion’s Skin 
The Fox and the Stork . 

The Boy Who Cried Wolf 
Cinderella 

The Tongue-cut. Sparrow 
How the Finch Got Her Colors 
Snow White and Rose Red 
The Honest Woodman . 

Battle of the Fireliy and the Apes 
How the Brazilian Beetles Got Their Gorgeous Coats 
A Story About Little Rabbits 
Boots and His Brothers 

Blunder 

Toads and Diamonds 
Dick Whittington and His Cat 


V: 80 



. II 

237 

if: 

147* II 

fl51 


I 

255 


. II 

165 

II: 

35 3* II 

f323 


. Ill 

191 


. Ill 

197 


. Ill 

363 


. Ill 

145 


. V 

294 


. I 

104 


. I 

372 


. Ill 

86 


. Ill 

98 


. I: 

1 


. I: 

16 


. I: 

34 


. I: 

51 

I: 

; 170* I: 

fl67 

I 

: 166* I 

: fl63 

# 

. I: 

: |284 

# 

I: 

: 302 

I: 

: 419* I: 

: |423 


. II: 

11 

• 

. II: 

77 


. II 

358 


. II 

128 


. II 

175 


. Ill 

11 

II: 

151* II 

fl55 


. II 

74 


. Ill 

384 


. Ill 

242 


. I 

: 245 


. I 

: 104 


. I 

: 372 


. II 

: 165 


. II 

: 63 


. II 

: 22 


. II 

: t 35 


. II 

: 78 


. II 

: 82 


. II 

: 128 

II: 

161* II 

: |145 


. II 

: 237 


. II 

: 314 

II: 

353* II 

: |323 


. II 

: 329 


311 


MY BOOK HOUSE 



Justice continued 

Jack and the Beanstalk 
Prince Harweda 
The Marvelous Pot 
The Twelve Months 
Phaeton . . . 

Prince Cherry . 

Gigi .... 

The Enchanted Island 
The Talking Bird 
Knights of the Silver Shield 
Ye Merry Doinges of Robin Hood 
Kindness 

Old Johnny Appleseed 
Coming of the King 
Cinderella 

The Two Bad Bargains 
Little Gulliver 
Kindness to Animals 

Little Gustava 
Mary Had a Little Lamb 
The Squirrels That Live in a House 
A Letter From a Cat 
Mrs. Tabby Gray . 

The Tongue-Cut Sparrow 
Dame Wiggins of Lee 
Hiawatha’s Childhood 
Snow White and Rose Red 
Barry, a Dog of the Alps 
Two Little Birds and a Great Man 
Hassan, the Arab, and His Horse 
The Arab to His Horse . 
Thumbelisa 
The Lost Spear 
Gigi and the Magic Ring 

Little Gulliver 

Labor. See Industry 
Lack of Desire to be Right 

Clocks of Rondaine 

Lawlessness 

The Steamboat and the Locomotive 

Laziness. See also Indolence; Inactivity; Industry 
The Little Red Hen and the Grain of Wheat . 

The Cock, the Mouse and the Little Red Hen . 

Nutcracker and Sugardolly 

Elsa and the Ten Elves . 

LiT Hannibal 

How Brer Rabbit Met Brer Tar Baby .... 
Loneliness 

Alexander Selkirk 

Solitude 

Love. See also Family Affection; Friendship; Mother- Love 
Love for Mankind 

He Prayeth Best .... 

Johnny Appleseed. 

Melilot 

— Where Love Is, There God Is Also 
Hiawatha’s Fasting 
The Two Pilgrims .... 


KINDNESS 
TO ANIMALS 




II 

371 



III 

34 



III 

69 



III 

145 



III 

268 



III 

326 



III 

337 



IV 

12 



IV 

57 



IV 

204 



V 

49 

II: 

323* 

► TI 

f352 


. 

II 

74 


# 

II 

165 


# 

III 

369 


• 

IV 

85 

I: 

162* I 

: fl68 

. 


I 

: 254 

I: 

268* I 

: f269 

I: 

315* I 

: f313 



I 

: 180 



II 

: 63 



II 

: 19 



II 

: 431 



II 

: 35 

II 

: 87 

II 

: f 88 

II: 1235 

* II 

: f298 


\ 

* II 

: 1308 



II 

: 313 



II 

: 414 



III 

: 228 



III 

: 337 



IV 

: 85 



IV 

: 251 



IV 

: 117 



I 

60 

# 

m 

I 

212 



II 

91 



II 

251 



II 

138 



III 

237 



IV 

: 328 



IV 

: 353 



II 

: 76 

II: 

325 : 

* II 

: f352 



III, 

, 242 

# 

. 

IV 

194 

# 

# 

IV 

381 




152 


312 



KEY 


THE LATCH 

Love for Brother or Sister 

Snow White and Rose Red II : f 35 

The Six Swans Ill : 363 

The Talking Bird IV: 57 

Princess Nelly IV: 363 

Rama V: 383 

Joseph and His Brethren V: 294 

Love is Power 

The Wind and the Sun I: 119 

Melilot . Ill: 242 

How the Waterfall Came to the Thirsting Mountain . . . .Ill: 376 

Love of Father 

The Pony Engine and the Pacific Express II : 342 

The Little Big Man . I: 89* I: f 88 

Late I: |294 

Rama V: 383 

White Aster V: 373 

Ulysses V : 423 

Love of God. See Religious Feeling 
Love of Grandparents 

Bikku Matti II: 394 

Christening the Baby in Russia II: 218 

Love of Mother, See also Mother-love 

The Cap that Mother Made II: 12 

The Strong Boy Ill : 165 

Princess Nelly IV: 363 

Perseus IV: 412 

Ulysses (7 'elemachus) V: 423 

Love of Out of Doors, See also Nature in Special Subjects Index 

Ye Merry Doinges of Robin Hood V: 49 

Love of Wife 

Rama V: 383 

Ulysses V : 423 

TheCid V: 316 

Loyalty 

The Cid V: 316 

Roland V: 300 

Joan of Arc V: 306 

Luck (Fortune not a matter of chance but of character) 

The Luck Boy of Toy Valley Ill: 106 

The Enchanted Island IV: 12 

Alexander Selkirk .IV: 328 

Opportunity V: 337 

Wolfert Webber V: 107 

Meddlesomeness 

Goldilocks and the Three Bears I: 248 

Minding One’s Own Affairs 

The Battle of the Firefly and the Apes II: 82 

Miserliness, See also Stinginess and Greed 

The Golden Touch Ill: 274 

Modesty, See also Humility . 

Young Midshipman David Farragut IV: 354 

Cuchulain V: 396 

Mother-Love, See also Lullabies under Special Subjects Index 

Strange Lands 1:161 

Mrs. Tabby Gray I: 180 

Mother Spider I: 228 


313 


MY BOOK HOUSE 


Neatness and Care of Appearance, See also Orderliness 

There's a Neat Little Clock 

What the Moon Saw 

The Tea Party 

The Coming of the King 

Noisiness 

How the Finch Got Her Colors 

The Mountains That Labored 

The Bird of Paradise 

Obedience, See also Disobedience 

A Story About Little Rabbits 

The Cid 

Beaumains, the Kitchen Knight 

Rama 

Observation, See also Eyes not used 

Boots and His Brothers 

Jamie Watt and His Grandmother’s Tea Kettle 

Winter Neighbors 

Orderliness 

Snow WTiite and Rose Red 

Alexander Selkirk 

Overcoming Difficulties 

George Rogers Clark 

Alexander Selkirk 

Mr. Hampden's Shipwreck 

Robert Bruce 

Parrotry 

The Emperor’s New Clothes 

Passion, See also Rage, Temper 
( Giving way to) 

Alexander Selkirk 

Richard Feverel 

{Controlling) 

Rama 

Patience 

The Crow and the Pitcher 

Little Drops of Water 

The Hare and the Tortoise 

The Little Engine That Could 

Try Again 

Through a Mouse-Hole 

Hercules 

Robert Bruce 

Patriotism 
(. American ) 

The Flag Goes By . 

Betsy Ross and the First American Flag . 

George Rogers Clark 

Young Midshipman David Farragut .... 

The New Colossus 

The Melting Pot 

Stanzas on Freedom 

Address to New-Made Citizens 

(< General ) 

Robert Bruce 

Bannockburn 

William Tell 

Joan of Arc 

Peace and Quiet 

How Night Came 


. . Is 

. . Is 

. . Is 

. . II: 

. . II: 

. . II: 

II: 151* II: 

II: 145* II: 

. . V: 

. . V: 

. . V: 


. . II: 

II: 147* II: 

. . V: 

. . II: 

. . IV: 

. . IV: 

. . IV: 

. . V: 

. . V: 

. . V: 


IV 

V 

V 

I 

I 

I 

I 

I 

III 

IV 

V 


. . I 

II: 230* II 
. . IV 

. . IV 

. . V 

. . V 

. . V 

. . V 

. . V 

. . V 

. . V 

. . V 

III 


56 

69 

59 

74 

22 

*342 

tl55 

fl61 

316 

327 

383 


237 

tl51 

255 


t 35 
328 


390 

328 

264 

281 


75 


328 

228 

383 

130 

131 
299 
193 
200 

384 
423 
281 


293 

f293 

390 

354 

172 

173 
216 
217 

281 

289 

290 
306 

211 


314 


KEY 


THE LATCH 


Peace and Quiet continued 

The Bird of Paradise 11:151*11: fl55 

Perfection in Small Things 

Doll i’ the Grass II: 161 

Tom Thumb II: 262 

Thumbelisa 11:414 

Persistence, Perseverance 

Wee Robin's Christmas Song I: 166* I: f!63 

The Crow and the Pitcher I: 130 

Little Drops of Water 1:131 

The Little Engine That Could I: 193 

Try Again I: 200 

The Hare and the Tortoise I: 299 

Shingebiss I: 339 

The Sandy Poad, II: 200 

Christopher Columbus II : 204 

Boots and His Brothers II: 237 

Dick Whittington II: 329 

The Boy Hero of Harlem II: 184 

The Strong Boy Ill: 165 

The Princess on the Glass Hill Ill: 52 

Through a Mouse-hole Ill: 384 

Snow Queen (Gerda) Ill: 303 

East o’ the Sun and West o' the Moon (The La ssie) .... Ill: 399 

Little-Man-As-Big-As-Yopr-Thumb IV: 26 

The Nuremberg Stove IV: 284 

Hercules IV: 423 

The Boy of Cadore IV: 276 

Hiawatha’s Fasting IV: 381 

Alfred, the Saxon V: 80 

Robert Bruce V: 281 

Perversion of Good 

The Snow Queen Ill : 303 

Pity. See Compassion 
Pleasure-Seeking 

Tudur ap Einion Ill : 395 

The Enchanted Island IV: 12 

Rustem ( Kaikous ) V: 436 

Practising What You Preach. See also Words Without Deeds 

The Two Crabs 1:113 

Where Love Is IV: 194 

The Two Pilgrims V: 152 

Prayer. See Religious Feeling 


Preaching Without Practice. See Practicing What You Preach 


Pretence 

The Ass in the Lion’s Skin 1 : 245 

The Jay and the Peacocks I: 160 

Pride. See also Vanity, Conceit 

Toads and Diamonds 11:353* 11: f323 

The Fisherman and His Wife II: 191 

Cinderella (, Step-Sisters ) II: 165 

Pigling . Ill: 191 

Beaumains, the Kitchen Knight ( Lynette ) V: 327 

(In Being Grown Up) 

The Little Big Man I: 89* I: f 88 

Precocious Piggy I: 132 s * I: f 76 

Protective Power of God. See also Religious Feeling 

Noah I: 295 


315 


MY BOOK HOUSE 


Protective Power of God continued 

Night and Day 

The Babe Moses 

A Psalm of David 

David and Goliath 

Gideon 

Daniel 

Joseph and His Brethren 

Protective Power of Goodness. See also Love is Power 

Shingebiss 

Snow White and Rose Red 

A Story About Little Rabbits 

Melilot \ N . 

The Snow Queen ........ 

Protective Power of Wisdom 

Perseus {Pallas Athene) ...... 

Ulysses {Pallas Athene) 

Purpose 

The Strong Boy 

The Snow Queen {Gerda) 

The Six Swans 

East o’ the Sun 

Hiawatha’s Fasting 

Joan of Arc 

Robert Bruce 

{Lack of) 

The Clocks of Rondaine 

{Never Turning Aside From) 

Wee Robin’s Christmas Song 

The Talking Bird 

Purpose in All Creation 

The Acorn and the Pumpkin 

The Month of March 

March 

Pushing 

How the Finch Got Her Colors 

Quarrelsomeness 

The Bird of Paradise 

How the Finch Got Her Colors 

The Wise Men of Gotham ...... 

Hansel and Grethel 

Rage. See also Passion; Temper; Quarrelsomeness 

Prince Cherry 

Frithjof 

Rashness 

Phaeton . 

Religious Feeling see also Protective Power of God. 

A Psalm of Praise 

Spring 

The Babe of Bethlehem 

Piccola 

A Child’s Thought of God ...... 

He Prayeth Best 

The Feast of Tabernacles 

We Thank Thee 

, Where Love Is, There God is Also .... 

Alexander Selkirk 


I: 424* I: f418 
I: 420* I: f419 
. II: f256 
. Ill: 257 

. IV: 402 

. IV: 408 

. V: 294 

. I: 339 

. . II: f 35 

II: 161* II: f 145 

. Ill: 242 

. Ill: 303 

. . IV: 412 

. V: 423 

. Ill: 165 

. Ill: 303 

. Ill: 363 

. . Ill: 399 

. . IV: 381 

. V: 306 

. V: 281 

. . IV: 251 

I: 166* II: fl63 

. . IV: 57 

. Ill: 290 

. Ill: 348 

. Ill: 353 

. . II: 22 

II: 151* II: fl55 

. . II: 22 

. Ill: 82 

. Ill: 45 

. . Ill: 326 

. V: 338 

. . Ill: 268 

I: 419* I: f.423 

. I: 302 

. II: 300 

. II: 303 

. II: 302 

. . II: 76 

. II: 257 

. . II: 259 

. IV: 194 

. . IV: 328 


316 


# 


THE LATCH KEY 


Religious Feeling continued 
Joan of Arc 
The Story of Alfred 
A Hymn of Alfred’s 
Trees .... 
The Two Pilgrims . 


Renunciation 



Princess Nelly and Seneca Chief . 

. IV: 

363 

Repentance 



The Twin Lambs .... 

. I: 

255 

Jack and the Beanstalk 

. II: 

371 

How the Waterfall Came 

. Ill: 

376 

Alexander Selkirk .... 

. IV: 

328 

Frith j of 

. V: 

338 

Richard Feverel .... 

. V: 

228 

Resistance to Temptation 



Knights of the Silver Shield . 

. IV: 

204 

Resourcefulness 



Alexander Selkirk .... 

. IV: 

328 

Mr. Hampden’s Shipwreck . 

. V: 

264 

Robert Bruce 

. V: 

281 

Alexander Selkirk .... 

. IV: 

353 


Responsiveness 

The Ogre That Played Jackstraws 
Rest 

How Night Came 

{In Action ) 

The Bird of Paradise 

Restitution 

Richard Feverel 

Frith j of 

Revenge 

Richard Feverel 

Rudeness. See Courtesy 
Self Control 

Rama 

{In Face of Insults) 

Beaumains, the Kitchen Knight . 

Selfishness and Self Will 

The Little Red Hen and the Grain of Wheat . 

The Dog in the Manger 

Little Half Chick 

The Cock, Mouse and Little Red Hen 

The Twin Lambs 

Toads and Diamonds 

The Selfish Giant 

Prince Harweda 

The Twelve Months 

Pigling and Her Proud Sister .... 
Yehl and the Beaming Maiden . . . . 

Self Reliance 

Young Midshipman David Farragut . 

Princess Nelly {The Younger Children) 


V: 306 
V: 80 

V: 89 

V: 263 
V: 152 



III: 174 


. . Ill: 211 

II: 151* II: U55 

. . V: 228 

. V: 338 

. V: 228 


. . V: 383 

. . V: 327 

. . I: 60 

. . I: 157 

. I: 304 

. I: 212 

. I: 255 

II: 350* II: J323 
. II: 246 

. . Ill: 34 

. . Ill: 145 

. . Ill: 191 

. Ill: 220 

. IV: 354 

. . IV: 363 


Self Righteousness 

The Two Crabs 1:113 

Maggie Tulliver Goes to Live With the Gypsies {Tom) . . . .IV: 213 

The Clocks of Rondaine IV: 251 


317 


% 


MY BOOK HOUSE 


Self Satisfaction 

The Clocks of Rondaine . 
Sentimentality 

Dear Sensibility 

Don Quixote 

Service. See also Co-operation 

Melilot 

Hiawatha’s Fasting .... 
Simplicity. See also Modesty; Humility 

Bikku Matti 

Cuchulain 

Skill 

Robin Hood 

William Tell 

Sleepiness 

The Twelve Dancing Princesses 


Rustem (Deevs) 

Standards, False 

(Love of Material Wealth) 

The Man Who Loved Hai Quai . 

^ The Golden Touch 

(Living for Pleasure Only) 

The Enchanted Island 

(Obedience to Fashion Instead of Intelligence) 

Prince Fairyfoot 

The Swineherd 

Standards, True. See also Ideals 
(No Desire for Material Wealth) 

Gigi 

(The Choice of a Life of Labor Rather Than Ease) 
Hercules 



(No Desire for Worldly Position) 

Bikku Matti 

Steadfastness. See also Persistence; Perseverance; Courage 

The Strong Boy 

Perseus 

Hercules 

Joan of Arc 

Roland 

Beaumains, the Kitchen Knight 

Stinginess. See also Miserliness 

Why the Sea is Salt 

Strength 

The Strong Boy 

Yehl and the Beaming Maiden 

Hercules 

Cuchulain 

Rustem 

Strife of Good and Evil in the Soul 

The Twin Lambs 

Richard Feverel 

Stubbornness 

The Wee, Wee Mannie and the Big, Big Coo . 
Sulkiness 

The Right Time to Laugh 

Sweetness. See Gentleness; Compassion; Courtesy 
Talkativeness. See Garrulousness 


. IV 

. IV 
. V 

. Ill 
. IV 

. II 
. V 

V 

V 

. II 
. Ill 
. V 


III: 

III: 

IV: 

III: 

IV: 


III: 

IV: 

II: 

III: 

IV: 

IV: 

V: 

V: 

V: 

III: 

III: 

III: 

IV: 

V: 

V: 

I: 

V: 


I: 


II: 


251 

275 

90 

242 

381 

394 

396 

49 

290 

176 

74 

436 


216 

274 

12 

12 

270 


337 

423 

394 

165 

412 

423 

306 

300 

327 

159 

165 

220 

423 

396 

436 

255 

228 

235 

112 


318 


THE LATCH KEY 

Tardiness 

A Diller a Dollar 1:56 

Temper, Bad. See also Rage; Passion; Quarrelsomeness 

Dog in the Manger I: 157 

I Wouldn’t Be a Growler I: 159 

Snow White and Rose Red ( Dwarf) II : t 35 

Tongue-Cut Sparrow II: 63 

Toads and Diamonds II: 353* II: f323 

Prince Cherry Ill: 326 

Twelve Months Ill: 154 

Month of March Ill: 348 

Pigling Ill: 191 

Amman Ill: 197 

Temperance 

Rustem V : 436 

Temptation. See Yielding to Temptation; Resistance to Temptation 
Thanklessness. See also Gratitude 

Snow White and Rose Red {The D warf) II: t 35 

Man Who Loved Hai Quai Ill: 216 

Thoughtfulness. See also Inventiveness; Investigativeness; Wisdom 

Girl Who Used Her Wits II: 271 

Boots and His Brothers II: 237 

Enchanted Island {Selim the Fisherman) IV: 12 

Thoughtlessness. See above also 

Jack and the Beanstalk II: 371 

Blunder II: 314 

Enchanted Island ( Selim the Baker ) IV: 12 

Timidity. See also Fear 

Foolish, Timid, Little Hare II : 69 

Treachery. See also Faithlessness 

Roland ( Ganelon ) V: 300 

Trust. See also Faith; Confidence; Anxiety 
{In God ) 

David and Goliath Ill: 257 

Daniel In the Lions’ Den IV: 408 

{In Fellow Creatures) 

Melilot Ill: 242 

{Lack of) 

Little-Man- As-Big- As-Your-Thumb {Tsar Wisehead) . . . . IV: 26 

Truthfulness. See also Honesty; Dishonesty 

Una and the Red Cross Knight {Una) V: 12 

Rama V : 383 

Tyranny 

Robert Bruce V: 281 

William Tell V: 290 

Unforgiveness. See Vindictiveness 

Unkindness. See also Cruelty; Criticism; Selfishness and Kindness 

The Fox and the Stork I: 104 

The Twin Lambs 1 : 255 

Snow White and Rose Red ( Dwarf) II: t 35 

Cinderella II: 165 

Toads and Diamonds II: 353* II: f323 

Twelve Months Ill: 145 

Pigling Ill: 191 

The Snow Queen Ill: 303 

The Boy and the Elf Ill: 408 


319 


MY BOOK HOUSE 


Unselfishness 

How the Finch Got Her Colors II: 22 

Cinderella II: 165 

Toads and Diamonds II: 353* II: f323 

The Duty That Was Not Paid Ill: 112 

Melilot Ill: 242 

Where Love Is, There God Is Also IV: 194 

The Two Pilgrims V:152 

Unteachableness 

The Magpie's Nest I: 171 

Phaeton Ill: 268 

The Clocks of Rondaine IV: 251 

The Magic Horse IV: 40 

Untruthfulness. See also Dishonesty 

Boy Who Cried Wolf I: 372 

Unworldliness. See Standards, True 
Useless Grief. See Grieving Uselessly 
Vanity. See also Conceit, Pride 

The Milkmaid and Her Pail I: 146 

The Jay and the Peacocks I: 166 

Vindictiveness 

The Right Time To Laugh II : 112 

Maggie Tulliver Goes (Tom Tulliver) IV: 213 

Visionary Dreaming 

The Milkmaid and Her Pail . I: 146 

Wolfert Webber V: 107 

Wantonness 

Rustem {Kaikous) V: 436 

Warm Heartedness 

Maggie Tulliver Goes to Live With the Gypsies (Moggie) . . .IV: 213 

Watchful Waiting 

The Twelve Dancing Princesses II: 176 

Wisdom. See also Thoughtfulness 

The Little-Man- As-Big- As- Your-Thumb IV: 26 

Joseph and His Brethren V: 294 

Ulysses V: 423 

'Words Without Deeds. See also Practising What You Preach 

Belling the Cat 1 : 84 

Worship, True. See also Religious Feeling 

Where Love Is, There God Is Also IV: 194 

The Two Pilgrims .V: 152 

Yielding to Temptation 

Tudur ap Einion Ill: 395 

The Little Girl and the Hare I: 241 



320 



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